


tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

by kosy



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Found Family, Gen, Grief, Hurt/Comfort, Love, Post Finale, but like not gonna lie: mostly hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 17:09:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20727806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosy/pseuds/kosy
Summary: The funeral of one of the birds should have more attendants than this, some part of Taako thinks. But Magnus hadn’t wanted that, of course; he’d told Taako as much decades ago, just a few years after the Day of Story and Song. Taako had laughed then, told him he’d regret it when there weren’t any adoring fans weeping and tossing flowers into his grave. Taako isn’t laughing now, here in this clearing with the body that used to be his friend.(What comes after the end.)





	1. there and here

**Author's Note:**

> this one is kinda a dark one for obvious reasons, but regardless, i hope you enjoy reading! i have another good 7k already written and ready to post, but i'm still a ways off from being finished. thank you so very much! <3

It’s Taako who ends up burying Magnus. 

He hadn’t planned on it, of course—who would?—but after all is said and done, nobody knows what to do when the body is lying still in the bed, open-palmed, golden wedding ring resting right over the life line. There are tears, equal parts joyous and sad. There is shuffling away. There are subdued, awkward goodbyes. Kravitz isn’t there, and nobody asks about it. What is there to ask? They all know where he must be. 

Merle clears his throat after everyone is gone. “Do you want me to—?” He doesn’t finish the question, but Taako doesn’t need him to. He shakes his head. 

“Just help me carry him.” 

Merle nods. Taako leans forward, grabs the cold ring between two fingers, and slips it into his pocket. He can’t yet bring himself to touch Magnus enough to put it back on the necklace resting on the body’s chest. 

They leave the foot of his bed and stand on either side. When they pick him up, Magnus’ head flops back, and Taako nearly drops him when he moves a hand to cradle it, panic jolting in his chest. Merle grunts and almost drops the body, but doesn’t reprimand him for making the job harder, just moves further down and holds on tight. The height discrepancy of nearly three feet makes it even worse, but there is very little else they can do. 

They take him down the stairs into Hammer & Tails, then out through the back door into the fields. They walk for a while, quiet. Before he had gone, there were stories of valor and foolishness and battles Taako had forgotten for years. Magnus had laughed, hoarse and quiet from his bed, his large, scarred fingers curling around his ring. They had laughed with him, as loud as they could, trying to fill up that cramped little bedroom, and it had almost worked. Taako remembers Magnus’ protective instinct, how he would throw his shield out in front of them in battle even if it opened up his weak side so they could just escape death for a little longer, how he would throw his body out in front of them too if he had to. Remembers Magnus shoving him to the ground in cycle 27, remembers this great hulking idiot dying from the millionth stupid inconsequential trap in this dungeon. It never got easier, his friend dying right in front of him, even knowing he’d come back. 

Magnus will not come back this time. Taako can’t feel anything at all. It is infinitely worse. 

They lay him down in the center of the meadow. Thankfully Merle had the foresight to grab a shovel from behind the house. Taako isn’t sure he would have been able to bear going back.

The funeral of one of the birds should have more attendants than this, some part of Taako thinks. But Magnus hadn’t wanted that, of course; he’d told Taako as much decades ago, just a few years after the Day of Story and Song. Taako had laughed then, told him he’d regret it when there weren’t any adoring fans weeping and tossing flowers into his grave. Taako isn’t laughing now, here in this clearing with the body that used to be his friend. 

Merle crouches by the body and murmurs a prayer, hand resting lightly on the chest. He pulls himself up to his feet and brushes off his hands. Taako picks up the shovel.

“Taako?” he murmurs, the first thing said aloud in what must be an eternity. 

“Yeah, Merle?” 

"Are you sure you don’t want help?” 

He snorts and turns away, striking the shovel into the ground. The impact shakes him more than he thought it would. His shoulder aches. 

Merle watches him flinch with his clear gray eye and extends a hand as if to heal or buff him, but seems to think better of it and turns to go instead. 

He strikes at the ground again, and Merle sighs. Taako can hear him whispering a prayer, voice just above a breath, and then footfalls descending into silence. 

He closes his eyes. He hadn’t planned on crying, and he’s not much in the habit of changing his plans. 

It’s long, back-breaking work. Taako’s never been the strongest person physically, and aging, however slowly, hasn’t helped. He remembers: six feet down. It’s not something he hasn’t done before. He’s buried his sister, his brother-in-law, his captain, _ everyone _before. He’s dug more graves than he can count. But that was different, and he can feel it down in every bone and muscle and sinew in his body. The handle of the shovel wears his hands raw. After about an hour, the thin skin of his fingers is broken. He doesn’t cast any spells. Doesn’t enchant any of it, the shovel or his fingers or the ground. He pushes on. 

It’s well into dusk by the time he finishes. Hauling himself out of the grave, he considers the body. It wasn’t hot today, and he doesn’t know too much about—_ fuck _—corpses, but Magnus’ skin looks so paper-thin. He waits for his friend, his brother, to breathe again, and curses himself for the cliche. 

He kneels beside Magnus’ head. Picks at the leather cord hanging around his neck. It’s not a difficult tie—just a square knot—but his fingers are shaking so hard he nearly drops it. He can’t tell if it’s because of exhaustion or not. It takes a few tries, but eventually he manages to get the cord undone. He pulls the ring out of his breast pocket where it has rested heavy against his chest for hours and slips it onto the slim cord. Sloppily, he reties the knot, pulling it tight, and hopes it never comes undone, hopes that one day when the soil erodes centuries in the future, people will find this old necklace still untouched by time, maybe still resting on the sternum of a body that has long since rotted away. 

His breath comes tight and fast, and he jams the back of his hand into his mouth and bites down hard and squeezes his eyes shut tight and tastes blood. 

He absolutely cannot cry today. He absolutely cannot cry ever. He’s done his fair share of that decades ago. Magnus happy now, goddamnit; Magnus is happy now. He knows. 

“Fuck,” he gasps out, releasing his hand and letting it fall to the ground, dust stinging the raw skin of his palm. “Fuck.” 

Gingerly, he hooks one arm under Magnus’ knees and slides the other under his ribcage. The body feels so fragile. _ How did he stay alive as long as he did? _ Taako wonders. Humans are so breakable. 

He ignores the hotness behind his eyes, the sharp restriction of his lungs, the strangled feeling in his throat. 

He slides down into the grave, roughly carved from the earth, slanted and poorly made. He used to just do this with magic, when he knew they’d be back a year later. There was less need for remembrance back then. Death had been a joke, albeit one lacking humor. Magnus would come back with a black eye. Lup would crush him in a hug. Barry would shake his hand, gaze heavy and thankful. Davenport would nod. Merle would smile. Lucretia would wrap him in her arms. Death was unavoidable, but not eternal. 

He lays Magnus down. There’s this little smile frozen on his face, brow unfurrowed, and he looks so much younger, far too at peace. Taako wishes he would grimace, wishes for his ugly laugh, wishes for the obnoxious put-on heroic voice that was always accompanied by the arched eyebrow and toothy grin.

“I hate this,” he growls aloud, just to hear his own voice. Maybe he wants to reaffirm he still has a voice, prove to himself and the worms in the ground and the birds overhead and the darkening sky and the body of his best friend in the whole entire world that _ he _ is the one still alive, _ he _ is the one with the beating heart and the expanding lungs and the clenching fists, _ he _ is the one who remains. 

Exhausted, all the fight leaving his body, Taako crouches down again, this time to rearrange Magnus’ hands so they clasp over his heart. A wave of nausea overwhelms him as his thumbs run over Magnus’ cold knuckles, and he turns aside to retch, but he hasn’t eaten today, so he just coughs and swallows and drops the hands, tilts his head back against the dirt, and rests there a moment. 

Then he picks his head off the dirt wall of the grave, rises from the ground, and turns to the long work of pushing the earth back over the body. 

* * *

When he makes it back to the house, Lucretia is waiting. 

He leans the shovel against the outside wall. “Hey,” he says. 

“Hello, Taako,” she murmurs, subdued. Her finger trails along the doorframe where she is leaning; her cane is resting a few feet away. 

“The craftsmanship is beautiful, isn’t it?” he asks after the silence has gone on a few seconds too long for his liking. He watches the now-old woman catalog the dirt under his nails, the blood staining his hands, the shaking of his legs, the choked quality of his voice. 

She sighs and pushes herself off the doorframe. “Yes. It is.” Taako remembers the woman she used to be, all catlike grace and imperious smiles and the simple elegance only time and suffering and great growth can lend someone. He remembers strength and leadership and love. Lucretia stands before him now, heavy-eyed, supporting herself on a cane, and she is still the woman she had been but changed now, old, and it hurts. It hurts that she is here, but not for so much longer. It hurts that she is closer to death than life. It hurts that she is human, in spite of what he used to believe. 

“I wonder who’s going to live here now,” she comments quietly, shifting her weight. Her eyes are pensive, but Taako can see the way her fingers are clenched around the cane; Magnus’ handiwork, of course, and he knows that if he were to get close enough to it, he would be able to trace the faint scent of lavender. 

“I don’t know.” He scrubs a hand across his face and tries to breathe in normally. When he takes his hand away from his eyes, Lucretia is starting to move toward him, a little slowly, joints stiff, likely from not moving much all day. Her hand lands on his still-slightly-raised arm, surprisingly firm in its age, and holds tight. 

“Taako…” she says, and he shakes his head, tries to wrench away, but she simply lets go. 

“I thought everybody else had left by now,” he rasps out, stumbling backwards. 

Lucretia shrugs heavily. “Merle told me you were burying him alone. I was about to leave, but I thought you might want company after that.” She pauses, seems to consider, eyes infinitely exhausted. “Or at least a friendly face.” 

He wants to snap at her. He wishes he could. 

“Thanks,” he says instead, quiet. 

She just nods and leads him back inside the house. The lamps are lit inside, bathing the kitchen in a warm glow. Haltingly, he walks to the cabinets and begins to make dinner. There is nothing else he can do. 

* * *

Eventually, Taako goes home. He and Lucretia don’t talk much in the weeks they spend together, relocating the dogs Magnus had kept, cleaning up his house, sorting out his possessions. Sometimes, people will come to help for a day—Carey, Killian, Angus, Davenport, Merle, Lup, Barry, even Kravitz, taking time off work, and countless others Magnus had befriended in his life—and then leave. Ultimately, it is their duty, and only theirs. It feels good to put his hands to work, at any rate; it’s much better than lying flat on his bed wishing Kravitz would come home, or sitting at his too-big dining table, staring off into space until night comes. He and Lucretia don’t talk much, but when they do, it’s so easy. It becomes easier to remember that lost century, sitting awake at night talking, looking out on worlds that wouldn’t be there in a year. He remembers fighting side by side, teaching her how to hold her own against Magnus’ dumb jokes (hell, even his own dumb jokes) and scuffling, showing her little elven spells his culture had once held close to its chest, but who cared now that it was all gone? He remembers. He remembers, and it doesn’t hurt like it used to. At night, he lets Lucretia have the couch (“I’ll let you rest your old bones,” he says with a teasing grin, and ignores his aching muscles in favor of the blanket nest on the hardwood floor). In the morning, he cooks up breakfast; even years after they have inhabited the same space, they still know how the other takes their coffee, and Taako can fry eggs just the way she likes. 

One day, Lup says in her fake-casual voice, “So… it’s good to see you and Lucretia getting along.” 

He shrugs, smiles mildly, shoves his hands into two of his many pockets. “Sure. We’re working together, have been for weeks. ‘Course we’re getting along.” If Lup wants to posture, so can he. 

She mirrors his body language, hooking her thumbs into the pockets of her jacket. She’s wearing a skirt, light and flowy and yellow, and Taako is reminded uncomfortably that it’s summer. 

“Okay, Taako,” Lup responds, voice pitching into the tone it only gets when she thinks she has something over him. He kind of wants to strangle her. He shoots her a look that says as much, and she lets it go. 

The cabin at the ruins of Raven’s Roost starts to feel like something approaching home. Taako thinks, a little desperately, of his own massive house on the hill overlooking a small town, all grand staircases and arches and the expansive garden out back that Merle spends most of his time in when he comes to visit. People didn’t come by too often, and Taako was out of the house on press tours or overseeing his school most of the time, but he can’t imagine going back to those vast empty halls, even only for a few hours. 

On the last day that he stays at the house, he and Lucretia are sitting on the porch swing, sipping cups of green tea as the sun goes down over the hills. 

Taako shifts, curling his legs up under him as the air gets colder. 

“I haven’t forgiven you,” he says, watching the sun disappear slowly, consumed by the hills. The first few years after the Day of Story and Song, panic had made his breath run shallow at sunset as the sky slowly turned dark. Thunderstorms were terrifying now, not just for the noise and the danger, but for the way they so entirely blocked out all light. Sometimes, it still feels that way just existing: the dark and the noise and the danger, hiding only a few skies away.

Lucretia exhales and takes another drink of tea. “Okay,” she says softly. “I understand.” 

He curls his arms around himself, staring straight ahead. 

“You’re still my family, though. I still love you.” It’s the most honest he’s been in years. He feels peeled back. Raw. It’s like breathing in saltwater. It feels like defeat. He digs his nails into his palms until his hands ache and sting. 

“I love you too, Taako.” She doesn’t reach out to try to touch him, and he is at least grateful for that. He doesn’t think he could bear it. 

The next dawn, he goes home to his wide, empty house without telling her goodbye. Kravitz is there to greet him with a tight embrace and kisses pressed lightly to his cheeks and forehead and nose and lips. Taako wraps his arms around him and holds on as much as he can. He doesn’t ask about Magnus, but he likes to think he’s happy somewhere, out in that infinite sea. 

He keeps himself occupied, as much as he can. He cleans, bakes and cooks more food than anyone could ever eat, makes grandiose plans for the future of his school. He even tries to invent new spells, a pastime he hasn’t turned to since his time on the Starblaster. He is shocked by how much he enjoys it, even now. 

Things are almost normal. 

A few weeks later, Kravitz comes home with his face drawn, and Taako is too afraid to ask why, but Kravitz answers anyway. “Lucretia has died,” he says and braces himself as if waiting for a blow. Taako does not move to him. He doesn’t even speak. He simply freezes, and then breaks, crumpling backward against the wall and nearly hitting his head on the marble.

There are no tears, no shudders, no screams. He stares straight ahead and breathes shallow and sharp. When Kravitz tries to speak to comfort him, he goes rigid, eyes darting like a scared animal. Kravitz retreats, opting instead to simply hold his hand until he comes back to himself an eternity later, only then beginning to shake, violently, as if he’s been dropped into the freezing cold sea. 

Kravitz puts him to bed that night, and he hates how drained he feels, how exhausted. He imagines cleaning out Lucretia’s home, too, all journals and books and art supplies surely strewn across the ground, or maybe sorted neatly into their shelves and drawers. He doesn’t know. He’s never been to her home before. 

Kravitz pulls him closer, tracing cool fingers over his wedding ring, and Taako curls into his chest and hides his face in his shirt. 

“Thank you,” he says quietly. 

“Of course, love,” Kravitz murmurs into his hair, and he places a reassuring hand on his waist. It takes him a while to drift off. 

When he wakes up, Kravitz is gone. He worries at the ring on his finger, tries to forget what he knows and doesn’t know, and gets up to make breakfast. He cooks his eggs the way Lucretia likes without thinking, and almost shatters again, but he can’t now, of course, not alone. He can’t let himself. How pathetic would that be? 

He reads books without really reading them, stares at spreadsheets and reports that he should be able to comprehend but can’t, staggers through calls over his stone of farspeech, forgets to make himself anything to eat for almost a full day, until there’s a knock at the door. 

He jolts awake, except he wasn’t sleeping, he just—wasn’t. He wasn’t anything at all. 

“Hello?” he calls out hoarsely. Kravitz wouldn’t knock. He clears his throat and tries again. “Hello?” 

“Hello, sir,” somebody says from behind the door, and Taako lurches to his feet. 

The door swings open after a couple seconds, and Angus McDonald hesitates before walking in, closing the door behind him. “Hey,” he says, and then jumps forward to catch Taako as he wavers. 

“I’m fine, kid, _ Jesus,” _Taako snaps, shoving him away. Angus isn’t a kid anymore, and can’t be so easily pushed off, but he backs off anyways, holding his hands up. 

“Sorry, sir. I just thought it would be a good idea to come and check in on you, especially so soon after—” Taako levels a glare at him, and he relents. 

“I said I’m fine.” He stalks into the kitchen, and the young man follows him. 

“Have you eaten today?” Angus asks, and Taako wheels around, taken off guard. 

“Of course I have. I’m the best damn chef in the world, I can make myself food,” he grumbles, opening the nearest cabinet and, realizing he wasn’t looking for anything at all and finding nothing anyway, slamming it shut. Angus flinches. 

“That doesn’t mean you did,” he says smoothly, regardless. 

Taako shrugs. 

“You might be the best chef in the world, but I’m the best detective,” Angus continues. “Let’s have dinner.” 

The elf snorted and pulled open another cabinet, stretching onto tiptoes to take a couple pots down from the high shelf. “That’s not detective-ing. That’s basic social literacy. Don’t let it go to your head,” he mumbles, and Angus laughs, brushes his hand against his shoulder as he passes by on the way to the stove in silent comfort. He doesn’t feel anywhere close to okay, Taako reflects as he snaps his fingers to light the stove. Just like he’s maybe waking up. 

That night, Kravitz finally comes home, and Angus sleeps in the guest room. Kravitz tells him about the necromancy guild he, Lup, and Barry had broken up, a contained sort of joy in his face as he talks. Taako laughs, quietly, and kisses his cheek, talks about the wonderful meal he’d made Angus. It’s almost like how it was back when Angus was a just a kid, staying with them for weeks on end as he attended Taako’s and Lucas’ schools simultaneously, practicing magic together late into the night. The kid would haul himself out of bed in the morning blurry-eyed and smiling and ace every test on two hours of sleep, no caffeine necessary. Once he’d graduated, they’d seen less of each other. That had hurt, a little more than he’d wished it would. It still did, a bit. But Angus had become more friend than child in previous years. Taako doubts he’ll ever be a father—frankly, the idea of him raising a child is almost upsetting—but helping Angus grow and learn and become a man everyone is so proud of is probably the closest to honest work he’s ever going to get. It’d be odd, anyhow, to think of Angus as anything other than his boy. 

Kravitz smiles at him almost indulgently and presses a kiss, slow and languid, to Taako’s mouth. “It’s good to see you again,” he murmurs against his lips, and Taako doesn’t buy into that poetic-double-meaning bullshit, but he can’t help but smile and kiss him back, strong and solid and real in a way very little else has felt for him lately. 

Taako pulls away first, laughing low and quiet, and slings his arms around Kravitz’s neck lazily. “C’mon now,” he grins, “Ango’s in the guest room, we can’t do this tonight.”  
  
Kravitz snorts and ducks back in to kiss him again, light and chaste. “Of course not, love,” he says, and picks Taako up easily, arm crooked under his knees, and carries him without effort to their bedroom. 

Taako squawks indignantly, as he always does, but then chuckles and hums quietly against Kravitz’s neck, craning his head back to brush his lips against the underside of his jaw. “Tired,” he mumbles against his throat, and Kravitz laughs so that Taako can feel the rumbling against his mouth. 

“I’m sure you are, dear,” Kravitz remarks, voice dry. “Angus told me you hadn’t slept or eaten until he showed up.” 

Taako groans. “Traitorous little bastard,” he mutters without any true malice, and Kravitz chuckles and sets him down, gently, on their bed. 

He looks at the Grim Reaper, smile slipping off his face. 

Normally, he would all but toss him at the mattress, knowing Taako would always land on his feet, catlike. Of course he would. It’s what he _ does _. 

His mouth flattens into a wry line. “Surely you haven’t lost _ all _ faith in me,” Taako drawls, and Kravitz winces defensively. 

“That’s unfair, Taako,” he says. There’s no edge of warning in his voice the way he’d expected; he just sounds tired, weary. 

“Yeah?” Taako replies, unmoved. 

Kravitz stares at him, incredulous. “You just lost two of the people you care most about in about a month, Taako. I’m trying to take care of you.”  
  
He scoffs, gathers a fistful of sheets into his hands and grips tightly. “I don’t need you to take care of me, _ darling. _ I need you to—to—” he curses and breaks off. He doesn’t know. 

“To?” Kravitz prompts, the barely-audible word too loud in their cavern of a bedroom. 

“I don’t know.” He is so tired of not knowing. 

“Come here,” he murmurs, resting his head back on their pillows and opening his arms, and Taako goes. All the fight has left his body He falls asleep that night with Kravitz’s arms wrapped tight around him, comforting in their chill. He wakes up the next morning to another empty bed. 

“It’s like being married to a ghost,” he says aloud to the cool morning air, and he laughs. His fists curl up in the sheets. 

He loves him. He loves him more than he has the energy to love most anything else. He loves the way his eyes crinkle up when he smiles, even loves him when he doesn’t have any eyes at all. He loves his easy strength and his deep, genuine awkwardness, the way he stumbles through every social interaction, laughing self-deprecatingly. He loves that he knows how to bring him back from all the edges he tends to pitch himself towards. But… well. Waking up alone still feels the way it always has. 

When he goes downstairs, Angus is in the kitchen in his pajamas, presumably trying to cook breakfast. “Absolutely fucking not,” Taako tells him, elbowing the kid out of the way. Angus snorts and lets himself get pushed around. 

“Sorry, sir.” It’s pretty much already done, Taako realizes, standing over the stove. Perfectly good eggs and perfectly good toast. Coffee just the way he likes it. He slumps back against the kitchen island, suddenly tired. 

"No, it’s okay. You did a good job.” 

Angus sighs and offers him an arm to guide him towards the kitchen table, then retracts it at Taako’s glare. “Fine,” he murmurs instead, resigning himself to trailing after. “Just so you know, I, uh, invited Ren and Lup and Barry and Merle and Carey and Killian and, you know, everyone over for dinner. That okay?” 

Taako snorts. “Gods, Ango, give a guy some warning, huh? I mean, I expect I’ll be hosting.” 

“Sorry, sir,” he says again, and just then he notices the bags under the young man’s eyes, the way he seems crumpled and tired like the clothes Taako is wearing for the third day in a row. 

He tries to soften his voice. “Yeah. I’ll, uh—Yeah, I’ll start getting the, you know, necessary supplies after breakfast, go down into Caurina Point—I think they’ve got a market in the town square on Saturday mornings, today’s a Saturday, right?—and you can clean the fuckin’ house, make sure the kitty litter’s all taken care of, since you’re running the place now.” Angus laughs a little nervously, and Taako reflects that maybe he hadn’t succeeded as much as he’d thought he had with the whole softening his voice thing. He tries again. “You’re okay, kid. I, uh. I think some company wouldn’t kill me.” 

Angus shuffles in his chair uncomfortably. “Me either. And, um—if you don’t mind, sir, I’ve also invited my daughter. She’ll be there. And a couple of new Bureau people, too.” 

“Hang on, your—you really don’t have to call me sir, by the way, Taako is fine, you’ve known me for upwards of thirty years now—your fucking _ daughter? _ You have a _ child?” _

Angus fully grins now. “Yeah, I went the sort of Tres-Horny-Boys route and picked a random child off the road. It’s hard being, well, the best detective of any age in all time and raising a kid, but her name’s Madeleine and she’s four and a half-elf and absolutely the best kid in the world.” Taako laughs, unbelieving, and shakes his head. 

“Thank gods. I thought I’d missed like eight of your, I don’t know, lifetime mile markers? Milestones. Right, that’s the word. Uh—you got anyone helping you out vis-a-vis the child-raising?” he asks, raising an eyebrow and throwing Angus the best shit-eating grin he can muster.

The young man snorts and starts clearing the table. “My station has some benefits; we’ve got a daycare center. Romance isn’t really my area of expertise anyways. I’m a little busy solving heinous, heinous murders and such in these lands I call my home.” 

Taako shrugs and gets to his feet with his plate, still grinning. “Sure, sure. You’ll figure it out one day, though, don’t worry about it, kiddo.” 

“‘Course I will, sir,” Angus smiles over his shoulder and starts washing the dishes. “I mean, you did.” 

“Quit callin’ me sir. And what, did you ever—you ever doubt me or anything?” He begins to wander out of the kitchen, twisting his hands unconsciously. 

Angus turns off the sink for a moment, face soft and serious. “Of course I didn’t, Taako. I always knew you’d be okay.” 

Taako finds himself almost laughing, semi-hysterically, but he catches himself before he even starts, face falling flat and tired. “Thanks, Angus.” 

Another smile, this one a little more hesitant. “Okay. So I’ll—I’ll go ahead and get started on that housework, right?” 

“Damn right you will.” 

The young man turns, humming quietly, and pulls out his wand. With a gesture and murmured command, he prestidigitates the dishes a base level of clean and turns to the kitchen island. Taako makes a quiet noise of approval and leaves without another sound. Normally, he’d keep his house so clean—he wonders distantly what went wrong as he picks his way through his living room, all important documents scattered across the floor, spilled ink, books pulled out and lying forgotten on the floor, the messes of spells gone awry. Charred floorboards, bookshelves with broken supports. He concentrates a moment, extending his fingers towards floor, and wills the scorch marks away. 

Nothing changes. 

He closes his eyes tight a moment, then opens them again. “Come on,” he mutters. “Come _ on.” _

Angus: “Sir? Are you okay out there?” 

“I’m fine. Get back to work.” 

_Come on. I’ve transformed a mile of black glass into gemstone. I’ve fought the hopelessness of existence and won. I’ve evaded death through a century dead set on killing me, and then escaped it for decades still after that. I’ve done magic that could make gods tremble. Come _ on _ . _

He can feel the magic surging up inside him, and he almost chokes on it, but it doesn’t—

It just _ doesn’t _. 

Taako feels sick, a little, staring at the black marks on mahogany, arms limp at his side. Irrationally, he feels tears, too, hot behind his eyes and in his throat. His hands are trembling, he thinks, and he clenches his fists, staring at the hardwood floor without really seeing it. 

He opens his hands and tries again. This time, the marks go away, easy as that. There’s no disturbance, no sickening release of power, no shouts of triumph, no claps on the shoulder. 

“Of course there’s not. It’s housekeeping. Get it the _ fuck _ together,” Taako says aloud to nobody in particular, and walks out the towering front doors.

People recognize him at the marketplace, of course. You’d have to be—well—who _ knows _ what to not recognize one of the birds, even all these years after the Day. Either way, murmurs have followed him everywhere he went for years. “Isn’t that the kid who stole from pa’s shop yesterday—?” to “There’s that jackass who beat me out for valedictorian” to “Fuck, _ that’s _ the guy representing our planar system?” to “I could swear I’ve seen that face somewhere before—Glamour Springs?” to “Holy shit, that’s—that’s _ Taako! _ From the Story!” on and on and on. On better days, he tosses his hair out of his eyes and throws the murmurers his best gap-toothed smile, walks on. But today, these murmurs feel different. Today, he pulls the hood up over his ears and ducks his head down, but the whispers still follow him, waves coming back to shore. The edge of pity is unmistakable, and it hurts more than any accusations or insults ever did. Poor Taako, lost his two fragile human friends. Poor Taako, his sister and his brother-in-law and now this. Poor Taako, all alone in his palace on a hill. Poor Taako, I heard he buried the Magnus all on his own, did you hear? Poor Taako, in love with Death because it’s the only thing left for him. Poor Taako, if only he could magic himself happy again. 

He casts a thin illusion over his face as an afterthought—not enough to make him a completely different person, but enough to shorten his ears, straighten and darken his hair, clear away his freckles. A perfectly respectable high elf, no other planet other than this one for him, no sir. A few blocks down in the town center, he takes off his hood and buys as much food as he can carry, affecting a heavy warbling voice that the vendors can dismiss as commonplace Taako Imitation and let him be. He wonders if that’s how they see him: all absurd tone and warped dialect and sassy comments and nothing else. He wonders if they’re right. 

He’s pretty sure that’s always been an issue with him. It’s easy to see the high elf from another planet who runs the world, short skirts and flashy magic and smirks and aloofness, the better-than-you attitude evident in the very tilt of his head when he regards you. “I’m multi-dimensional!” he’s shouted, or at least he remembers doing so. Not much sticks with him these days. It scares him to think about his memories slipping away—how couldn’t it?—but his ability to remember is draining through his cupped hands. It’s a symptom of old age, which he hates even more. It shouldn’t be too surprising; after all, he’s at least halfway through his lifespan. He’s all but a middle-aged man. Retirement, kids, vacations to the beach, a staling relationship with his significant other: that’s what he should be doing right now. It would be easier, certainly, than burying his friends and being recognized and accosted whenever he leaves his house. It shouldn’t be too surprising, but it is. It’s not quite the same as the static, but as his memory dulls, things just—leave him. They leave, and they don’t come back. Maybe he could find them if only he knew what he was looking for, or how to get to it. But he doesn’t and he can’t. 

“How was the marketplace?” Angus calls from the other room when he returns. 

“Oh, the usual,” Taako replies, and he sets down the groceries. 

* * *

His dining room table was a wedding gift, or something like it. 

He and Kravitz never, legally speaking, got married. As much as he loves planning absurdly large parties—just ask Carey and Killian and the half of Faerun that went to their wedding reception—Kravitz is technically dead, and also they’re two very busy men when you consider Taako’s brand and school and Kravitz’s eternal fight against those who would disrupt the natural order of life and death. So, no, they didn’t legally get married. But one night Taako told Magnus he was in love with Kravitz, quiet and afraid, and Magnus had grinned wide and wrapped him up in a tight hug and three days later he was at Taako’s house with a giant wood-carved table strapped to his back, and a couple days later Taako just bit the bullet and got himself and Kravitz matching rings because at that point why the hell not. 

The table has a slanted surface and little chips on the straight edges because Magnus made it so quickly, and at first Taako had made fun of him for that, but then he noticed the intricate designs carved into the legs and the beautiful grain and the rich color and the faint scent of lavender, and then all he could do was smile until his cheeks hurt. 

Magnus had hugged him again, after he put down the table in the dining room and shunted the old one out of the way. Taako had scrabbled halfheartedly at his thick, heavy arms but relented after the customary few seconds of protest. 

“You smell gross,” he’d mumbled, relaxing against his chest. 

“Yeah,” Magnus had laughed into his ear. “I just carried a giant fucking table up a hill on my back. I’m sweating like a damn racehorse.” 

“And whose fault is that little stunt?” he had replied. 

Magnus just chuckled again and pulled him in tighter (a feat Taako had previously thought impossible). “I’m happy for you, Taako,” he’d whispered. 

The table still fucking smells like lavender. It doesn’t matter how many sauces Taako spills on it, how many times he scrubs at it with soap and cleaning rags. He doesn’t know what the hell Magnus did to that table, but he kind of wishes he’d asked now.

Waiting for the guests to arrive, he says to Angus, “D’you think Magnus would’ve taught me how to do carpentry? If I’d asked?”

He adjusts his glasses and blinks at him. “Well, of course, s—” Angus replies, barely restraining himself from saying “sir” with a self-deprecating grin. “He taught me a couple years ago. Or tried to. I mean, I wasn’t any good, but.” He seems to flounder for a moment. “You could, uh— I think they give classes down at the Neverwinter community center.” 

Taako snorts, picking at the hem of his fancy cloak. “C’mon, Ango. Can you even see me down there with th—the commoners, getting my hands dirty? Let’s be realistic now.”  
  
Angus rolls his eyes and doesn’t further comment. Uncomfortably, Taako is reminded of the benefits of said commoners, primarily their inability to see when he’s lying. 

“I could probably teach you now, you know.” 

He scoffs, ears flattening against the side of his head. “I appreciate it, but the whole ‘I wasn’t any good’ thing wasn’t what I’d call a glowing recommendation.” His voice is more… scathing. Than he thought it would be. He clears his throat unnecessarily and shifts his weight. 

Angus shuffles a little and opens his mouth as if to say something else, but is interrupted by a knock at the door. 

“Oh thank God,” Taako mumbles, and Angus doesn’t look at him before reaching for the door. 

“Heya, Taako,” Merle says, hobbling in through the door. “Agnes.”

“Angus,” the young man corrects, smiling gently, and Merle all but swats him off. 

“Eh, whatever. Listen, ‘Ko—” 

“Don’t call me that, old man.” 

“Jeez, kid, we’re practically the same age,” Merle grins, all missing teeth and awkward charisma. 

“I wear it better,” Taako snaps back, and Merle frowns at him. It’s an argument they’ve had a million times before, every line as practiced as it is repetitive and harmless, but he’s gone too sharp without so much as deviating from the script. Taako can see the gears spinning in Merle’s head, and he hates it with his whole heart. 

“As I was saying, thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it.” Merle brushes past them towards the kitchen.

“You’re not getting an invite to dinner when I have one again,” Taako calls back. “Fucking RSVP next time, maybe!” It still sounds a little wrong, stuttering over his tongue on the way out. The dwarf doesn’t bother replying, just gives an exaggerated shrug that makes Taako kind of want to strangle him. So he follows him into the kitchen instead, because frankly even murdering one of his oldest friends essentially unprovoked would be preferable to Angus’ gawkish, unsubtle concern. 

As soon as he crosses the threshold: “How’ve you been doing, Taako?” 

So, then again, maybe not. 

“Fine,” he says, folding his arms over his chest. “How’ve you been doing?” 

“Frankly, kid, not that fuckin’ great.” 

Taako laughs, surprising even himself. Thank the gods for Merle and his unwieldy honesty. 

“Yeah, me neither, man.” 

Merle hums and goes back into the living room, rooting around for something. 

“Don’t fuck with my furniture!” Taako yells, but he doesn’t bother to check on him.

He returns with a chessboard held victoriously above his head. 

“Aw, hell,” Taako mutters. 

“We don’t have to play,” he says, supremely unaffected as he sets it down gingerly on the dinner table. “I just think it makes a good centerpiece.” 

“Well—good,” Taako replies, wrong-footed. “Maybe you can kick the kid’s ass. Knock him down a few pegs.” 

Merle snorts and pulls out his chair (custom-made by Magnus, two feet taller than everyone else’s seat so he doesn’t have to stand up to be seen over the edge of the table. Magnus had always thought—goddamnit, it didn’t matter what Magnus had thought anymore). “Listen, man, like it or not, kid’s doing his best.” 

“Oh don’t _you_ be on his side now,” says Taako irritably. His skin itches all over his body. Not his skin, though. Under his skin. Deeper. 

Merle squints at him with his single eye. “Don’t worry, I’m not, and frankly, Taako, I’m a little offended you’d think otherwise. Got any appetizers?” Taako isn’t particularly convinced, but that segment of the conversation seems to be over, so.  
  
“What the hell kind of question is that?” Taako grins, already leaping up out of his chair; he’s so tired of trying to avoid prying questions or whatever the hell his friends and family are always trying to pull from him. “Of course I have appetizers.”

They’re not complex—just some good old Caprese on bread—but not-complex is about all he can handle right now. It’s why he can handle Merle so long as they avoid the topics they should. 

After all that, they do end up playing chess. He barely even notices when they start. Merle just—moves a pawn forward. Taako moves one of his. It goes back and forth, and Merle doesn’t even break the calm pattering of the conversation. Taako supposes he has plenty of practice with this sort of thing. He doesn’t voice the idea, though; he doesn’t want to break whatever quiet, painless bubble they seem to have formed. 

“...so then, you know. I tell Artemis there’s no way in hell I’m accepting any money from his crown, it’s really just what I want to be doing, helping these people out. You know how nice it is to build a family a new home? We’re still… cleaning up from Story and Song. Some people had their house wrecked, I mean their whole property just punched down into rubble and a pit in the ground. But they didn’t leave, Taako! They just kept clinging on. And I really don’t mean that in the bad way. They just stayed. And, I mean, I don’t have your magical skill, Taako. I don’t have a problem admitting that, it’s just true! So I just built it with my own hands. It wasn’t an issue.” 

“Quite the hero now, aren’t we?” Taako smiles, as much as he can. 

Merle surveys the board for a few moments and moves his knight towards Taako’s rook. “No need to be all mean about it. I’m just doing what I do.” His face is placid. 

They are quiet again for a bit. Merle slips into another anecdote, this one funny but mostly chaotic and irreverent, because even when grieving or playing chess or fending off the end of the world, Merle is still Merle. Taako doesn’t respond. Honestly, he just forgets to. He smiles a strained smile when Merle pauses, gaze flickering to meet his eyes. 

“Are you going to move?” Merle asks quietly. 

Taako flexes his fingers and flicks his eyes over the layout; he’s got a feeling he’s headed towards a checkmate that doesn’t end in his favor. “I wasn’t being mean about it, dipshit. I was just saying.” 

“Well, thank you, then. Are you going to move?” 

There’s a tension building up behind his sternum. “Are you going to stop fucking asking me that?” He settles his hands in his lap in a thin facade of calm and knots his fingers together. Trying to scan the board for possible moves, he can feel his focus draining away, descending into some screaming mass lodged in his stomach. 

“I wasn’t trying to rush you, Taako. I was just asking.” His voice is calm, gently coaxing. _ Kind _, Taako realizes, and something in his chest flares white-hot. 

“Stop being so fucking—nice. Or whatever the fuck you’re calling this. I fuckin’ hate it, okay? Just—just bully me for taking too long to move my piece, or give me shit for not bothering to make more elaborate appetizers for my dinner party, or for being mean to the kid. _ Please _.” His voice cracks. Before he can even think about it, think about anything at all, he reaches across the board and knocks over Merle’s king. It clatters against the wood. “Chess game over, okay? Fuck this.” He rises to leave, chair screeching against the floor. 

“Taako.” 

He stops moving, curls his hand at his side. Says nothing. 

“Taako, it’s okay.” 

Lup’s voice rings out through the house, cutting off Merle before he gets to say anything more than that. “Koko?” she shouts, and from rooms away, Taako hears Angus laugh and say something too distant and quiet for him to hear. 

“Let’s go outside, Taako.” 

He drags a furious hand through his hair, knotted and dirty. “You’re delusional if you think I’ve taken care of the garden since last time.” 

Merle shrugs. “You know I like doing the work anyway.” 

“Yeah, you’re fuckin’ crazy,” Taako replies and lets out a long breath. 

“Well, that’s why we’re friends,” he says, so simply, and turns to go outside. For a moment, he marvels at it: this grimy old dwarf who can be so loud and rough and boisterous and fucking _ inappropriate _, able to calm him with just a few words. Then he follows him. 

The two of them stay outside for a while. Nobody bothers them. They all seem to understand he’s not really the host, here. That he wants to be left alone. 

The world seems quieter, out here. Normally it would bother him, itch at the back of his skull, make him want to run and shout and sing until it was all _ something _ again. But Merle is still, centering. The Peacemaker indeed. He remembers, for a bit: coming back down to the world in a bubble. The vastness of it all, faced easily with people he knew but didn’t know, people he knew had his back relentlessly. Going places where nobody recognized him on sight. The sky falling away and the earth hurtling forward. 

His life has felt like the polar opposite of that. Now, it is the world on pause. 

They are watching the summer sun set. 

He has done this before. 

Specifically with… them. Just Lup at first. Then the full crew on the Starblaster, staring out over doomed worlds. Then with his team during the years of the Bureau. Merle and Magnus and him, making camp in the woods, cooking beans over little fires Taako lit magically as the sun went down. They weren’t good, the beans. He’d let Magnus make them; he knew the fighter’d felt better when he got to contribute something even if Taako could’ve done the same thing ten times better and ten times quicker and had told him as much. They’d shared swigs from Merle’s flask, home-brewed sketchy shit that had gotten them dead drunk in a half hour and let the dwarf cure their hangovers in the morning. They’d laughed up at the golden-red sky, didn’t give a shit about what monsters heard them because they knew they could take whatever the hell the night threw at them. It was the first time Taako had cared about the patterns of clouds, the fleeting, ever-changing colors of the sky. 

He stares out at his garden, the swaying tops of the trees.

He doesn’t even notice he’s weeping until he tastes the salt on his lips, until Merle is reaching up to pat his hip, until his chest is shuddering and he is leaning on the banister for support. 

“Gods, dude. Don’t tell anybody I’m out here crying like—like some kinda fuckin’ kid.” He drops to his knees so he can go eye level with Merle, and only then does he see that he’s crying too. 

“I miss them too,” Merle says quietly, not bothering to wipe away his tears, just letting them leak down into his silvery beard. “I’m not ashamed to say it, Taako. I miss everything about them. I’m sure they’re happy, wherever they ended up. I’m sure they’re not really gone. But gods, I miss them.” 

He finds himself looking at the wrinkles around Merle’s eyes. Laugh lines, frown lines. 

“You think they’re happy?

Merle laughs, full-bellied and easy. “You’re the one who’s dating the Grim Reaper, you tell me.” He sniffs grotesquely, and Taako wrinkles his nose at him. He just grins back.

“Honestly, Merle? I haven’t asked.” He forces himself not to turn away, and Merle seems satisfied. 

“I think that might be better. I think there are things we don’t need to know.” 

Taako thinks about the times when he couldn’t travel through planes with a snap of his fingers, when he couldn’t summon the gods to his side just by closing his eyes and thinking hard enough, when there were things in the world bigger than him. When life was just his size or too big. Now it constricts. It squeezes his shoulders and pinches at his hips. It cuts off the circulation to his feet so he can’t so much as walk. 

“Nice to see you agreeing with me for once,” Taako says instead, flashing him as much of a grin as he can manage, and Merle snorts. 

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Moment over. Let’s go back inside to the party, huh, kid?” he asks. “I’m sure Lup’s waiting for ya.” 

“Don’t fuckin’ call me kid, old man,” Taako snaps, uselessly scrubbing at his wet cheeks, but it all feels so wonderfully _normal_ that he can't even bring himself to care. 

“What, like you’d prefer to be a decrepit dwarf like me?” Merle grins back, producing a grimy handkerchief from his too-long jacket pocket without comment. Taako takes it gratefully and rises back to full height, wiping his eyes. 

Merle begins to wander back toward the door. “Come back when you’re ready, okay, Taako?” 

“I’m ready now, jackass,” Taako mutters, and flings the handkerchief back at him. Merle catches it effortlessly. He’s sure they both look like hell, but can’t bring himself to care; he looked like hell before anyways. At least he’d bothered to put on waterproof mascara and a clean linen shirt before the party. He doubts he could’ve managed much more, and at least now he knows the “waterproof” part of the deal was worth the effort. 

“Taako!” Lup yells joyfully as soon as he sets foot inside and sweeps him up into a tight hug. “I’ve been worried about you, kiddo!”  
  
“Yeah, I’ll fuckin’ bet you have,” Taako grins, disentangling himself after a few seconds and pulling back to look her in the eyes. “Honestly, though, not tonight, ‘kay? The only thing I wanna talk about is my kickass dinner—” 

“—that I helped with, for the record, ma’am!” Angus shouts from the kitchen, where he’s setting out plates, raising his voice over the hubbub of the dining room. 

“You don’t have to keep calling us by titles, pumpkin, honest to gods. We’re all adults here!” Taako calls back, but his mind isn’t on the conversation. The dining room is… loud. Somewhere, somebody is playing music on—is that a fiddle? The tune is upbeat, fast, happy. Barry and Kravitz are situated across the table from each other, grinning and presumably talking shop. Davenport—holy shit, _ Davenport _, it’s been years—has already slipped into conversation with a recently returned Merle, both relaxed on elevated chairs. Killian and Carey casually hold hands as they perch at the counter, chatting with Angus. All the old Bureau people Taako knew by name are here, plus some new ones who look shockingly young, like maybe they joined later or are friends of Angus. They don’t wear bracers anymore but patches, sewn into their jackets or belts, or the old design tattooed into their wrist or bicep. Unconsciously, as he scans the room, he rubs at his own wrist. Ren is stirring a pot in the kitchen and throwing comments back at Angus, Killian, and Carey, laughing at their jokes and contributing some of her own and soliloquizing about whatever new struggle has come up at the school and complaining good-naturedly about her colleagues and rambling about her new pastry recipes, all while making sure dinner doesn’t catch fire, bless her soul. He even takes stock of the cats, who are currently either in hiding or winding around Ren—they always loved her best. 

He finds himself smiling. Everything is so loud. He is so tired. He feels—better, he thinks. He should. He feels cried out. Distantly, he realizes it is the first time he’s cried since either death. He feels empty. He doesn’t know how he feels at all. 

Lup smiles back at him. “Glad to be here?” 

“Yeah,” Taako responds. 


	2. from day to day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a continuation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the hits start comin' and they don't stop comin'. again, we've got some Dark Subjects and there are undertones of suicide ideation and the like in this particular fic. also, we have some original characters in here who I'm too lazy to tag but they're present. enjoy the chapter!

Somehow, he calls the group to order. He ends up having to drag his old extra table out of the basement and asking Kravitz to pull some magic dead person chairs out of the Raven Queen’s domain, but he does call the group to order in the end. 

Somehow, he gets through the whole dinner, through conversations full of laughter and bright back-and-forth and the past. 

Somehow, he ushers people out the door at the end of the night, and they stumble away, drunk off Merle’s special concoctions, of course, but also joy and exhaustion. Krav makes sure they get home safe, tells him as much later once they’ve somehow made their way back to their bed. 

Somehow, he ends up curled up in Kravitz’s cool arms, forehead pressed into his bony sternum. The Grim Reaper’s fingers pull gently through his matted, tangled hair (“Promise me you won’t leave in the morning,” Taako mumbles against his chest, and Kravitz hums acknowledgment into his hair. 

“I won’t,” he whispers into his ear. “I’ll help you wash your hair, if you want. We’ll get the knots out together.” 

Taako is too tired to be embarrassed or upset, just nods and tucks his head under Kravitz’s chin and closes his eyes. “Okay. Just don’t leave until I wake up.”). 

Somehow, he gets up in the morning, showers under hot water, and rakes his hands and magical combs through his hair until it’s smooth and curling again, until his scalp aches. 

Somehow, even though his skin is baked red from all the time in the shower and the bags under his eyes are so dark they look like bruises and he’s pretty sure he hasn’t brushed his teeth in way too long, Kravitz kisses him when he gets out of the shower, and Taako sighs against his lips and winds his arms around his waist. 

“I missed you,” Kravitz says softly. “I always do, when I’m away. I feel like I don’t say that enough.” 

“Me too,” Taako murmurs. He doesn’t have the energy to tell him to cut the sappy shit. He just acquiesces and allows himself to be taken care of. 

They spend a quiet day in. Angus has gone home. He knows when there is nothing left for him to do.

(Taako met his daughter, the night before. She’s a sweet little half-elf like Angus said, with clear, perceptive amber eyes and a clever smile that suggest she’s at least as much trouble as her father was when he was a kid.) 

Kravitz makes him all three meals, and his cooking is as artless as ever, but Kravitz endures Taako’s too-sharp teasing with the good-humored kind of understanding that he envies. Kravitz plays violin in their living room while Taako reads, tucked under a blanket in the hazy, uncomfortable warmth of a midday in August. The sun sets late that day, and Kravitz braids his hair as it goes down, sitting cross-legged behind him. 

“How’s the book?” Kravitz asks in the sun-soaked living room. Taako leans back against him, putting the novel aside in favor of him. 

“S’good. I like the writing style. It’s snappy but not abrasive. Sometimes I feel like I’m getting left behind when the author tries to go too fast.” 

“Lots of action, then?” he questions. His hands are gentle in Taako’s hair. His sister always tugs too hard, as does Magnus. Did. 

“Not really. It’s just day to day life.” 

“And it’s still interesting?” 

“Yeah, guess so. I’m still reading it. I’m not bored.” He’s enjoying it, definitely. He just doesn’t remember much of it. His mind has been. Elsewhere. Today. And he knows it. If asked, though, he wouldn’t be able to say where. 

He can feel Kravitz smiling from behind him. “I’ve been working on a new song,” the other man murmurs absentmindedly, and Taako can feel the featherlight brush of cool fingers against the nape of his neck. The cold used to be a shock, frigid hands covering the expanse of his ribs, icy fingers tapping on his arm as he laid on Kravitz’s lap, chilled body pressed against his back head to toe. Now, either Taako’s gotten used to it, or Kravitz has gotten warmer, because now he sighs into his husband’s touch, leans back against his chest slow and easy. 

“Yeah? What’s the song, babe?” 

Kravitz shrugs; Taako can feel the rustling movement against his shoulders. “It’s… I don’t know, yet. I’m still working it out. It’s in A minor, though.” 

Taako pauses a moment and tries to hum the scraps of song that Kravitz has been playing all afternoon, taking the time to examine what fragments that have been shared with him. “It’s soft.” Kravitz moves a hand away from his hair for a moment to briefly trace his fingers down Taako’s cheek, maybe noticing how it’s hollower than usual, maybe just to touch. “Melancholic—is that the word for it?” 

“Yeah, you’ve got it.” His voice is almost upsettingly tender when he moves his hand back to the task of braiding. Taako’s been growing his hair out recently. It feels nice to be able to pull it back when he needs it out of the way or let it down when he wants it to curl wildly around his face. 

He idly raises a hand to push a strand of hair out of his eyes. “Is it for me?” 

“No,” and the smile is gone out of his voice. “I wouldn’t wanna, uh—I guess, simplify what’s going on. It would feel wrong. It—it’s complex, all that, more complex than I think I can do justice to, because really it’s not about me.” He sighs, leans back to cast around for a ribbon to tie Taako’s hair with. “But there are things that are simple enough. For my music.” He wraps the string around the tuft of hair at the bottom of the braid and performs some kind of complicated knot-tying Taako’s sure he made up himself. “For instance, the fact that I love you.” 

He finishes tying the ribbon but doesn’t make to move away, so Taako lets himself slump down into him, close his eyes against the last rays of light filtering in through their wide windows. “Love you too, Bone Boy—we’re, uh, A minor, huh? Seems kinda depressing.” 

Kravitz chuckles quietly, a rumble that makes its way through Taako’s whole body like the purr of a cat; he’s known Taako long enough to understand a deflection when he hears one. “Sure. Want anything to eat?” 

“Nah. ‘M not hungry.” He fumbles around blindly for Kravitz’s left hand and smooths a thumb over knuckles until he finds the ring and taps his fingernails against it. “Gotcha,” he mumbles, and Kravitz snorts lovingly. His mind has begun to wander again, which he distantly recognizes is maybe a dangerous thing. The grief lurks somewhere in the back of his head, an aging bruise upon which pressing down has become muscle memory. It’s too easy to wander back into that vast blankness that consumed him for days on end and maybe consumes him still. He doesn’t remember things as vividly as a lot of people seem to, most of the time. But sometimes the memories will punch him in the gut. Admittedly, they’ve been a little fucky since the voidfish, but they’re still _ there _. 

It seems like a curse, the remembering. Being able to push his fingers into the sharp ache of the past until his eyes water. But he also knows the pain of wandering in the dark, searching for the hurt that should be there and finding nothing and nothing and _ nothing— _

So maybe he’s better off like this. 

“Come back, Taako.” Kravitz has moved his free hand to tap gently against Taako’s right ear, which he flicks irritably. 

“I’m fine! _ Jesus!” _ Taako snaps, too loud in the warm quiet of the room. 

Kravitz sighs deep and slow as if to steady himself. “I know. I know.” They sit there for another stretch of seconds, but Taako forces himself to stay there, this time. He counts his own heartbeats. 

“I’ve been reading this new poet,” Kravitz begins. “Not another Romantic. They’re too—” he waves a hand in the air. “—for me, as of right now.” 

“Yeah?” he says to fill the space. 

“Yeah. He’s bleak, this—Dmitri, I think. Dark. Blunt but still poetic. He’s straight-up, but he doesn’t sound like he’s just—saying things. He sounds like he’s trying to make you understand why they matter.” 

Taako waits, and switches from counting heartbeats to breaths. 

“I’m not going to be here tomorrow.” 

“Okay,” Taako says. 

“It’s dangerous.” 

“You can’t die.” 

“Well, I don’t—in theory, yes.” 

Taako laughs, a little panicked. “I swear, Krav—” 

“I can’t. Won’t. Die. I won’t die.” 

“Okay,” Taako says. 

“I won’t.” 

“Okay,” Taako says. 

“You’ll be alone for a few days.” Kravitz idly pulls at the ribbon and Taako swats his hand away. 

“Hey, don’t pull out my hair, you jackass. That took a while.” 

Kravitz tries and fails to stifle a snort. “I know; I’m the one who did it.” His voice is, as always, warm. When his hand brushes against Taako’s neck again, it, too, is warm. 

“You’re gonna be more and more busy now, huh?” 

“Yes, Taako. I think so.” He sounds heavy, tired, and Taako feels that way too. “That’s usually how it goes with apocalypses. Peace, and then not, come a few decades. I’ve seen a few.” 

“Gods.” Taako lets out a long breath. “Kinda a downer today, huh, babe?” 

Kravitz redoes the ribbon and leans down to kiss him behind the ear. “Comes with the territory. What kind of tea do you want before bed?” 

* * *

When he wakes up the next morning, bright and clean and cold, the space in the bed next to him is empty and perfectly smooth, and he’s furious at his own surprise. 

* * *

The weeks pass by, dull flashes in the cosmic pan. Kravitz is back two days after he leaves, but come another two days he’s called out again. So it goes for longer and longer stretches of time. Angus comes to visit, with his little daughter. Lup and Barry drop in when they can. Ren brings him coffee and talks animatedly about the ongoings of the school, hands dancing in the air. Taako watches the movements and hums when it seems appropriate. When she’s gone, he stares at the paperwork she’s left, but can’t make himself to complete it. 

Eventually he starts turning people away. Flicks off all the lights in his house. Spends hours on end staring at his hands as they begin to line with age, pale from lack of sun. Sits in the garden, watches weeds overgrow it. He doesn’t look in the mirror anymore. Kravitz asks him, when he’s home, how he spent his day; he lies or talks about cooking the meal he always has waiting for him or just shrugs, doesn’t meet his eyes. It’s too much. Lup knocks on his door; he recognizes the pattern. He doesn’t answer. He’s staring at the paperwork. Has been, on and off, for months. Days spent at the house, doing nothing, feeling nothing. His school seal shimmers magically in the top right corner of the paper, proudly emblazoned with his name and brand. The brand. The _ fucking _ brand. 

A nameless representative from his own marketing team knocks on the door one day. “Can I come in to talk with you, Mr. Taako? We called you on your stone yesterday, but you didn’t pick up.” 

“I’ve been offline,” Taako drawls, pitchy and strange even to his own ears. “Doing a bit of a social media cleanse.” 

The media rep smiles a little awkwardly. Probably new. Probably likes this about as much as he does. 

“Well, this shouldn’t take long anyway. We just would like you to consider—um, making an appearance? Of some sort? It doesn’t have to be long. Just, you know, addressing the, uh, recent events of your life. Maybe offering a message of hope? They’re all grieving with you, you know. They need you, Mr. Taako.” 

Taako’s lip curls. “The masses can do without me. More importantly, I can do without them. Tell your fuckin’ bosses that, okay? I owe you all _ jack shit, _ is that clear?” He’s aware of his voice raising, the young half-orc backing up, polished smile slipping off her face and giving away to undiluted fear. “I’m not a goddamn brand, I’m not your cash cow, I am _ nothing _ that I don’t want to be. And you know what? I’m doing just fine.” He barks out a laugh that some might describe as hysterical, and others might as hopelessly, furiously sad. “Never been fuckin’ better.” 

“Sorry, sir, I—” 

Taako lifts a hand and, with a flick of his fingers, magically slams the door in her face. He waits until he hears the thud of running footsteps fading into the distance and then a dull roar, and he falls back against the door, breathing hard and shaky. 

_ Is this what a panic attack feels like? _he wonders vaguely, digging his thumbnail into the bone of his wrist until, painfully, after far too long, he comes back to himself. 

The next day, he leaves his house for the first time in what feels like months. Maybe it has been months.

He goes to find the Bureau of Benevolence.

Naturally, he casts Disguise Self before he even walks out the door, magicking himself into a human male with a little more meat on his bones and a short, coppery beard. He looks at himself in the mirror as his hair pulls in close to his scalp, his ears shrink, his shoulders broaden, his jaw widens. It never becomes normal. He never looks like himself. 

So he turns, satisfied, and heads toward town. 

They’ve got an office in every sorry excuse for a village, now, stretching all across the damned continent. _ Nowhere’s safe, _ he thinks, grinning to himself. On the road to town, people passing by smile to him, nod cordially. Normally he’d be amused at their lack of recognition, their inability to see the legend of their age for what he is. Now, Taako finds himself struck by these baseline kindnesses, the simple acknowledgement of his humanity, in a way that makes him distinctly uncomfortable. Still, he returns their smiles with some of his own. After a few minutes more of walking, the rolling hills with their intermittent chalets and shacks give way to more frequent apartments and townhouses, until everything is piled on top of itself, newer buildings grafted onto the old. The streets are surprisingly empty; for a moment, Taako is surprised until he realizes it’s eleven in the morning. Everybody is already at work, or in school. There’s little reason for anyone to be out at all, but for the few stay-at-homes hanging out their laundry and young children playing in the alleys. A couple of other drifters wander their way through the cramped avenues, but they pay him no mind. 

Taako feels an itching urgency in his palms and the soles of his feet. He ought to be leisurely, taking in his time outside, the novelty of the city, the latent familiarity of this place he’s lived so close to for decades now. He ought to be breathing in the relatively fresh air, scented with the cafés just beginning to turn their attention to lunch. He ought to be meandering through the streets. But he is none of those things right now. He gets himself turned around on his way to the very center of town, a path he has walked enough times that it ought to be ingrained into his memory, and finds himself sharply and impatiently asking a passerby directions, only for her to snap back. He retorts malevolently and turns to leave, but guilt twists at his stomach and he apologizes quickly, speed-walking off. It had almost felt good, he reflects as he half-runs, snarling at her. He’d come close to escalating, maybe casting off his disguise and striking the fear of the gods into her, or more specifically the fear of Taako. He shoves his hands into his pockets and stares at the cobblestones. 

And when he looks up again, he’s staring at a quaint little building whose little folding sign on the sidewalk reads “Caurina Point’s Bureau of Benevolence Office (Open 24 Hours—Just Ring!)”. 

“Sick,” Taako says aloud, and rings the doorbell. 

“Coming!” yells a voice from inside. There’s a clattering noise as somebody rushes down what sounds like a set of stairs, and then a muffled _ oof. _

“You okay?” he calls inside wryly, and the door is flung wide open. 

A tall, spindly-looking young aarokocra man is panting in front of him. “Sorry, sorry, I’m okay. I was just—er—trying to catch up on some sleep. See, nobody ever comes by this time of day, and I was away all night on a mission—” the aarokocra grins proudly at this, chest still heaving, “—so I’d rather thought it’d be okay to sort of, you know, nap upstairs. I wasn’t even supposed to be working today, but my shithead coworker dipped on me.” The guy has infectious, happy energy even while complaining that infects Taako too, much to his dismay, and he quirks a little commiserating smile without even meaning to. “Er—come inside, ‘course. I’m Brennig. How can I help you?” 

“I’m, uh, actually looking for a job with the Bureau. Who do I talk to about that?” 

Brennig perks up. “Aw, hell yeah, you wanna come work for the B.O.B.? They just recruited me a couple of months back. It was—is—my dream job! Well, I mean it’s everyone’s of course, but it’s so exclusive these days, I’m so lucky they accepted me. I haven’t done much yet, just doing desk work for the local office and all, but it’s all so exciting, Mr.—er—?” 

“Uh—Bur….ger. Burger. It’s a family name. Martin… Burger.” 

“Sure! Well, you know, Mr. Burger, if you’re looking for a job, you actually have to go all the way to the top, to Director Raphael. He’s kinda hard to get an audience with but I’m sure you’ll find a way!” He says the new Director’s name with such reverence it makes Taako’s skin crawl, but he forces a polite smile onto his face. 

“I guess I’ll have to fight some fuckin’ ogres?” he asks, heaving a dramatic sigh. _ Again. _

The young aarokocra cocks his head to the side inquisitively, smiling blankly. “Ogres, Mr. Burger?” 

Taako’s stomach flips. “Aren’t you—didn’t you—the Story, kid?” 

Brennig chuckles sheepishly. “Oh! The Story, of course! I’m—er—a little young for that, actually. My ma told me as best as she could remember, and of course I read Director Lucretia’s novel for school, but I didn’t actually… you know. Fantasy Sparknotes. Sorry. I didn’t get the reference, I guess.” 

He forces a laugh out, painfully, and is certain it doesn’t land right, but Brennig keeps grinning sportingly anyway. The idea of people being _ too young _ is—is— 

He can’t even imagine it.

Taako knew people like that existed in theory, just by the nature of time. Hell, Angus’ kid is too young. _ Angus _ was almost too young. But the actual reality of people just not knowing, or simply not _ understanding _, the weight of the apocalypse, one hundred times over, every year, the decade of static and isolation and utter wrongness, the Grand Relics, the Light, the trail, the Bureau of Balance, the quests, the strength of a family forged in fire and pain and constant death, the Starblaster, the terror of facing the end of the world once more and the sheer joy of winning, the grief for those who couldn’t come back, that cosmically beautiful Song—

It’s like a punch in the gut. 

He’d thought the Song would always be there, somewhere. He guesses he’d thought that about a lot of things.

Distantly, Taako is aware of Brennig laughing back at him, uncomfortable and quiet. 

“Well. Uh. Sorry, then, dude. Just… can you just tell me where to talk to this Raphael guy? I’ll figure out some way to get an audience, I just have to know how to get there. Long as it’s not on the moon, I think I’m gonna be fine.” 

Brennig offers him a wary smile before continuing. “Don’t, er, don’t worry about that, Mr. Burger. We relocated not too long after the Day. One hundred percent land-based now, that’s the Bureau. Headquarters are in Neverwinter now, and I think we’ve actually got trains from here to there. It’s a twelve hour or so train ride, so it’s a hell of a commute whenever I have to get to head office, but it’s better than the alternative.” 

Trains. Goddamnit. It had to be a train

“Cool. Thanks. I’ll put in a good word for you.”

Brennig does that _ thing _ again, tilting his head a bit curiously, but doesn’t ask. _ Of course, _ Taako realizes as the door shuts behind him with a gentle tinkle of a bell. _ Who am I to be putting in good words with the Director? _ He looks at his hands, and they are not his own. For a moment, terror pulses through him hot and bright, and then he remembers he is disguised, of course. He tries to laugh at himself, that age-old cure, but his heart is still beating too fast. It used to be freeing, this disguise. He doesn’t want to be looked at, Taako decides through a haze as he wanders under the clear blue sky, he wants to be _ seen _. 

The train station is only a few blocks away from the office, thankfully, and is nearly deserted. It’s...eerie. The heels of his boots echo jarringly, and he carries out the purchase of his ticket in a near-whisper with the attendant, who seems wholly unfazed by the quiet and speaks to him in volumes rivaling any young bard. 

“DEPARTURE WILL BE TWO HOURS FROM NOW ON THE DOT,” the tiefling man booms. 

Taako winces at the sound ricocheting off the walls. “Uh… okay, cool. Thanks, dude. I’m gonna…” 

“SEE YOU THEN!” he bellows back. Taako wonders vaguely if this is how this man gets his kicks—yelling jovially at uncomfortable-looking travellers until they slink away. _ It’s a living, _he reflects, smirking. And not a bad one at that. 

He glances around the station. It’s massive, arching room made of marble or maybe granite, and the platforms stretch on and on and on. A complete mismatch to its city, probably built in a more optimistic time, after the end of the world that Wasn’t. Back when it seemed like any town could become great and populous and central, some new Neverwinter. Taako had thought so, too, maybe, when he’d commissioned his grand mansion on a hill overlooking Caurina Point, after he’d tired of that vast, cramped city. Too small for him, too known. But Caurina Point, quite definitively, did not become The New Neverwinter. Industry slowly shifted away, unemployment went up, wages went down. The town with its charming little jewel-tone apartments didn’t grow and spread across the hills; it crouched like a wounded beast in its valley with only this train station left to show for it. It’s grand the way anything with great stone domes inevitably is, but it feels hollow. Taako shakes himself and tries not to start muddling his way into a metaphor, opting instead to find a bench and sit there. 

Maybe normally he would’ve gone out to explore the town square of Caurina Point. It’s not a market day, but it’s still a nice place; he picked it as his base for a reason. Probably got some restaurants. He could go to a bakery, review some crepes, get a little family business some recognition. Look at the flowers. He imagines doing all of those things, deliberately contemplates them. He can feel brick beneath his feet, almost. The sun on his back. A voice in his ear, laughing, rich and soft and shy. 

(“Taako—_ Taako!” _ Her voice is pitched up high and giggly in the way she never lets it be in front of anyone else. “Quit it!” 

_ “Wha-aaat? _ I’ll say it if it’s true, and trust me, Luce, I _ know _ it’s true. Nothing you say’s gonna stop me from speaking my truth.” 

“It’s not your truth, it’s _ my _ truth! Get your own!” 

Taako grins and makes grabby hands at her. She bats him away indignantly, but she’s laughing too hard to even play the straight man to his comedy routine. 

He yelps through his own laugh and grabs her hands lightly. “Careful, careful, you’re gonna fuck up your nails!” 

“Right, right, sorry.” She takes a calming breath and she’s back to unassuming, shy, nervously poised Lucretia, still definitively the baby of the team even two full decades in. 

His heart twists for a moment at the thought, but he shakes off the prickle of grief with well-practiced ease and smiles again. “You like her, though. You do. I caught you picking flowers and sighing happily in a field yesterday, and you didn’t even do that on the planet that was _ literally all flowers. _ Your sketchbook is filled with her—and don’t accuse me of any sneaking, okay, you leave that thing open everywhere. Just make a moooooooooooooovve,” he purrs, winking as lasciviously as possible and affecting the most disgusting voice he can think of. “She’ll love it. She won’t be able to keep her _ hands _ off you, my dear.” 

“Taako, I am going to kill you with my bare fists,” she says, lips completely straight and head tilted up imperiously.   
  
Taako lets out a barking laugh and goes back to her nails. “That’s my girl.” 

She snickers, ducking her head, and he pauses for just a heartbeat to watch her. Her eyes flicker around the cramped, sun-soaked bedroom, and he knows she’s looking for her journal without knowing she’s looking, cataloging this conversation in her mind, just itching to write it down in that painstaking, flowing detail that’s so very hers…) 

“Caurina Point to Neverwinter, _ LAST CALL! _” the tiefling from earlier booms, and Taako jerks into awareness to find the man staring directly at him. There is nobody else left in the station to stare at.

“What the fuck just happened?” Taako says aloud. Finding no answers in either the deserted platform, the loud tiefling, or himself, he boards the train. 

* * *

The ride is both long and boring. 

For a few hours, he entertains himself by looking out the window and letting his mind go blissfully, novelly blank. He doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t think. He just lets the landscape roll by and he watches it go, eyes not landing on or following any particular object. It all blurs together: the sun, the buildings, the dirt roads with their little wagons and horses, the young children chasing dogs, the rivers, the forests. He rests his head against the window and feels the buzz of movement drilling into his head painfully, but he doesn’t move. He listens to the reassuring, rhythmic huffing of the train, the metallic groans and gives of the tracks. Nobody bothers him. The train is sparsely populated to begin with, but even so, nobody pays much mind to the slight, copper-haired human man lying crumpled like an old cloak against the compartment window. Not even the food cart disturbs him. He isn’t quite asleep, some far-away part of him has registered. He has not so much slipped out of consciousness as he has poised himself in between layers of it, like ducking half underwater so your eyes are both above and below the surface, part of both worlds and part of neither. Taako’s own eyes slip half-closed. He has not moved in hours, and he cannot sleep. 

He could stay like this forever, he thinks. He wonders what would change. He wonders what he has left to give to this world. 

He’s not even quite sure why he’s seeking employment with the Bureau. He doesn’t even know what they do nowadays, much less how he, an aging once-hero elven wizard, fits into whatever nebulous idea of a cause they have. Now that there are no more Grand Relics to recover, no more dragons to slay, and far too few Red Robes to orbit. 

_ Well, it’s something to do, _ Taako tells himself, sighing. His breath fogs on the window, and he pulls back, startled. It is the first time he has moved for four hours. Another gods-know-how-many to go. He groans and hits his head despairingly against the back of his seat. It has only just occurred to him that he could have teleported to Neverwinter with hardly any effort. 

“I’m in hell,” he mumbles. “I’m in hell and it’s all your fault.” He stares, accusatory, at the empty seat across from him, which does not react. With that being said, he tips his head back, closes his eyes, and slips into a closer approximation of sleep. More like a trance. Of course, elves (unless really making an effort) do not truly sleep. They meditate, keeping solid awareness of the area around them. When adventuring, this is an advantage, as it makes them far less likely to be taken off guard by an attack. When attempting to wile away time on a train, it isn’t an advantage at all. 

Honestly, he would much prefer having a grisly murder to solve. Sue him. 

Taako keeps his eyes closed. 

When he opens them again, he’s in Neverwinter. No dreams. That’ll come of not truly sleeping. He doesn’t really trust himself to slip into sleep. He doesn’t want to know what he’d see if he did. 

* * *

Neverwinter’s grown since the last time he was here. That had been a different time—a vacation with Magnus and Merle. A boys’ night, or rather a boys’ several days. They’d posted up in a hotel and hadn’t bothered paying for security guards or any of the old rigamarole, instead opting to do each other up in increasingly elaborate disguises every day before they went out. 

_ I just want to train dogs and travel and be happy, _ Magnus had complained, that familiar melancholy forever in his eyes. _ Is that so much to ask? _ Taako had given his best commiserating grimace and magicked the other man’s hair into a truly upsetting beehive that had made Magnus yelp in horror when he looked in the mirror. Merle had cackled wildly, wiping a tear from his eyes, and Magnus had laughed back with a halfhearted punch at Taako’s shoulder. Taako cocked his head and disappeared his facial hair, tacking it on top of the beehive. _ Give me back my beautiful sideburns! _ Magnus howled, tackling Taako onto the nearby bed and twisting his arm behind his back. _ Uncle, UNCLE, holy _ shit _ , Magnus! You’re gonna rip my fuckin’ arm off! _And then Taako wrenched his arm free and blasted him with a bolt of fire that scorched the awful hair off, so it had all been alright, really. 

Taako flattens his ears and shoves his hands deep into his pockets, keeping his head low. Nobody spares him a second look; the city with its wide cobblestone roads and towering buildings and unfocused crowds rushes on without noticing him. 

He tries talking to a couple passersby but doesn’t manage to get anyone’s attention until he catches the arm of a burly bugbear walking by. “Hey—do you know where the bee-oh-bee headquarters are?” 

The bugbear shakes him off, hazel eyes narrowing in thinly veiled annoyance. “Sure, kid. Take a right on Fifth Avenue, head a couple blocks down, can’t miss it.” 

“Thanks, man,” Taako says, and pushes away his own annoyance. The part of him that is still a petulant celebrity rears its head once more: _ Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you care? _ That part of him ignores his disguises, ignores whatever skin he has magicked over his true self, ignores whoever he tries to be. _ Please, just treat me differently. Treat me kind. _

He walks until his feet are sore and only when he’s genuinely considering just pulling out his stone of farspeech and desperately calling Kravitz to come pick him up, damn his heaven-ordained mission to punish crimes against death itself, only then does he find the Bureau of Benevolence. 

It’s a massive wooden building, mahogany and rustic in this industrial city. It is a rectangular prism with a slanted roof. It looks homey, even. A carefully hand-painted wooden billboard that proudly reads “Home of the Bureau of Benevolence” hangs outside. The dissonance almost physically throws him off balance. He thinks of perfect domes, of immaculate cafeterias, of artfully designed offices, of perfectly decorated bedrooms, of a voidfish tank with glass so clean it’s all but invisible. He inhales, steels himself, and pushes the door open. 

Inside, it’s busy, full of chattering employees, all bearing tattoos of the Bureau symbols that glow with a faint arcane energy. Taako snorts. _ Cowards. Why don’t you just have an unremovable bracer like the rest of us that you have to pry off after a barely-averted apocalypse with one of the most powerful spells you ever invented, draining you of energy for days afterward? _There’s a line up to the reception desk that he takes one look at and completely revises his plan. 

He approaches a group of employees lounging on a couch together, sipping coffee and reading through what looks to be small books of reports, presumably of the goings-on around the continent. They’re sprawled out on top of each other, legs intertwining, arms resting around each other’s shoulders. He almost feels like he’s intruding on something intimate, except he knows he can’t be. They’re coworkers skimming through reports, for the gods’ sake. But there’s that feeling, still. It wasn’t like that when he was here. 

Taako clears his throat and does his best to ignore the discomfort. “D’you all know if I could get an appointment in with the Director?” 

A kobold glances up from her papers. “Doubt it.” 

“Okay,” Taako says, and he drops his disguise. 

He cracks his neck and grins wider than he has in weeks, just for the drama of it all, and the kobold’s eyes go wide. “Holy _ shit. _ You-—you’re— _ ” _

Her companions glance up; a kenku claps a hand over his mouth, and a gnome almost falls off of the couch. “Yeah—uh—” The kenku seems dazed. “I’m sure we could, uh, get you an appointment. Is there anything we could do for you—uh—sir?” 

“Call me Taako,” he says, grin stretching wider. Guilt pangs somewhere in his chest, and he bats it aside fiercely. 

“Of course, Taako,” the gnome replies distantly, and they stumble off towards an elevator, punching the button for the top floor. 

“Sooooo,” Taako drawls, flopping down on the couch next to the workers. “How’s the Bureau? It’s been a bit. You really changed up the ol’ aesthetic.”

“Yeah, d’you like it?” the kobold asks, ears swiveling toward him. 

His thoughts stutter for a moment, and he’s thinking again about glass domes and sleek edges and sharing a bunk bed and the way the stars looked from the false moon and— “It’s pretty neat, yeah. Like the whole homestead look,” he replies, waving a hand around at the lobby. And it is nice. Polished wooden floors. Comfy couches. Photos of employees and humanitarian projects. Shelves upon shelves of books and journals. Fire roaring in the hearth—is it really fall already? It feels wrong that—

“It’s so good working here, too. ‘Course, I was just a kid on the Day but I still remember the Story and Song, and I’ve wanted to work here ever since; swear to gods I applied the second I came of age and I haven’t ever wanted to stop.” She flashes a genuinely happy, sharp-toothed smile at him. 

“Thank fuck _ someone _ remembers the Story and Song. D’you know I met an employee in your Caurina Point office _ who literally wasn’t alive _ for it?” 

The kobold sucks in a long breath. “Gods. That just feels—wrong. It was such an important thing and now it’s, what, something kids learn in their history classes and forget to do worksheets on?”

Taako laughs, surprising even himself. “Yeah, the kid used fucking Fantasy SparkNotes for his essay. And every adult he’s ever met lived the damn thing!” 

She laughs too, eyes warm and understanding, and shakes her head. “What brings you here, Taako? I know you haven’t… y’know. Left the house in a while. What made you want to come here of all places?” 

Taako smiles wryly. “Looking for a job, actually. I needed to…” 

He can’t articulate it, really. After the Day of Story and Song, he’d thrown himself into his school. It was his baby. Working on it had been crazy hard; he’d stayed up for days straight making building plans and writing brochures and calling Ren in fits of panic and planning exactly what it was he wanted to teach the best and the brightest young magic users the whole world over. And sure, he’d made jokes about breaking them all down into dust with his curriculum and hostile environment, but he would never actually do that to kids. He’s a got a truly annoying soft spot for them, which Angus’d proved if he’d proved nothing else. But he’d spent so much time and energy and money making it all a reality, and he’d put his cooking show back on the road, and he’d taken Angus into his home, and he’d met with his friends and made sure they were all doing alright, and then they were. And then Angus was moving out. And then he grew tired of traveling all the time. And then the school began to practically run itself. And he just… stopped. 

And then his friends started dying. 

All he wants to do is start again. 

The kobold is watching him, so he laughs again, looks away. “Sorry. Just lost in thought,” he says, as jovially as he can manage. She tips her head at him, an ear flicking back thoughtfully. 

“I understand.” She reaches out a clawed hand to touch his shoulder lightly, and Taako shuts his eyes tight but doesn’t flinch away. 

“Thanks.” There’s a pause. The other Bureau workers have long since turned back to their work, seeming to understand, too, in their own way. “D’you think they’ll hire me back?” 

She snorts. “Yeah, man, wonder if they’ll hire back fucking Taako. No offense, but… you’re Taako. They can’t not hire you.”   
  
Taako stares down at his hands knotted together in his lap. “Guess so, huh?” 

“Sorry,” she mumbles. “I don’t know what—I’m sorry. Just, y’know. Of course they’ll hire you. You’re who you are. It’s good press. A good look.” 

“Yeah.” He smiles as best he can. It’s just that—he’d thought, for a moment, that he could just be a person. The kind of person that has to worry about whether or not his job interview will go well. Whether his new coworkers and boss will like him. Whether the new work will suit him. 

Those days are long past. 

The gnome comes back from the elevator. “Mr. Taako?” 

“It’s really just Taako,” Taako mutters. 

“The Director wants to see you right away.” Their voice is all barely-contained excitement, genuine anticipation. It makes his stomach turn. 

“Great, then,” Taako hauls himself to his feet with an exaggerated huff. “Nice to meet ya,” he says to the kobold, and she flushes awkwardly. 

“You too. Sorry for, you know. I’m Sidd.” She holds out her hand for him to shake, and he takes it. 

“It’s fine. That’s just life, my dude,” he smiles, and grips her hand firmly. “See ya on the other side.” 

“See ya then,” Sidd replies. 

The elf drops her hand, turns on his heel, and marches into the elevator. The doors slide closed. And the compartment shudders to life all around him. Eyes open in the door. A manic smile curls wide. 

“Aw, fuck,” Taako says eloquently. 

* * *

The Director is waiting for him at the top floor when he finally stumbles out of the elevator. 

“All due respect, Director, but why the actual, genuine _ fuck _ did you let Lucas Miller have _ any _ goddamn say in your building design?” 

Raphael regards him, lips curling up into a small grin. He’s a human man with dark skin and darker hair that tumbles long and loose down to his shoulderblades. Slight but strong in a lean, understated way. Taako can feel the magic rippling off of him in waves. Insanely powerful, but of course he’d have to be to lead the Bureau. 

“Hell if I know. I certainly didn’t have a say in it. Do you mind if I call you Taako?” His voice is deep and measured, with an undercurrent of amusement that doesn’t go unnoticed by Taako. He respects him instantly, and kind of hates himself for respecting him instantly. 

“By all means, go ahead. Do you mind if I call you Raphael?” 

“I do, yes.” 

“Unfortunate,” Taako grins, and Raphael rolls his eyes at him. He winces and looks down and away, reminded in that moment so achingly of Lucretia that he loses his train of thought. 

“So, Taako, you want me to… hire you?” The Director asks, voice tilting absurdly high at the end of the sentence. 

The elf strides to the desk and slams his hands palm-down on the smooth wooden surface. “Yep,” he declares, tossing his hair over his shoulders for emphasis. He smiles brazen and sharp. _ Dramatic effect, _ something in the back of his mind whispers. _ Always go for dramatic effect. _ Meanwhile, another equally loud part hisses, _ Can’t you just be fucking normal for once? _At any rate, the human doesn’t flinch. 

Raphael looks at him with piercing eyes, a warm, striking gold that speaks of distant elvish blood, and Taako resists the urge to shift uncomfortably under that sharp gaze. He tilts his chin up higher. 

“Well,” the Director—gods, it feels wrong to call this strange man the Director, even in his head—starts. “Let’s get to the interview, then.” 

Taako’s brow furrows, but he leans back and projects _ This Is Exactly What I Was Expecting _ vibes as hard as he possibly can. “Sure.” He takes one look at the rickety oak chair positioned on his side of the desk and instantly conjures his worn leather armchair from home up out of the ether. The Director raises an eyebrow at him, watching him posture, but doesn’t comment. 

“So, past work experience,” Raphael prompts, shuffling through a stack of papers in his hands. 

He snorts. “Uh, spent my whole childhood skipping through various entertainment troupes and restaurants. Did some work-study at my home world’s magical academy. Fantasy Target for a bit during grad school, but I got fired after like a day so that doesn’t count. About a decade for the IPRE, then I spent a whole century honing my skills in the arcane and the cuisine while outrunning the literal manifestation of nihilism itself. Kickstarted my own cooking show. And then I worked here for a bit. Then I founded my own school and restarted the cooking show. Somewhere in there I saved the whole entire multiverse, but, I mean, take that with a grain of salt. Am I, like, _ good _, or…?” 

The edge of the human’s mouth twitches, but his voice is flat and cool. “Company policy, Taako.” 

“Oh, horseshit. Just hire me already.” 

Raphael sets the papers down in front of him and folds his hands on top. “Listen, Taako, your employee file’s still here, and it’s still updated by HR because technically you never actually stopped working for us. You’re right, I am kind of fucking with you. Everybody knows, on some level, your life story. I’m sure you’re aware of that. It would be hard not to be at this point. Yes, you saved the world. Yes, you’re a hero to anyone who has ever existed. And I think I know why you’re here.” 

His mouth feels dry. “And why’s that?” 

“Taako, you don’t know where else to go.” 

He is silent. 

“You—okay, so you save the multiverse. That’s the end of the story, right? That’s narratively appropriate. You get an epilogue, maybe. You go on some cool adventures, talk to some gods, hang out with your friends. That’s how history will remember you forever—frozen in those golden years after the barely-averted apocalypse, laughing with Magnus and Merle and Lup and Lucretia and Kravitz and Angus and all the rest, watching the sun rise over the mountains and feeling safe and fulfilled and happy. But you can’t be frozen forever. That’s not life. So you kept moving after the sunrise. And now your friends are dying or dead. And now—what? You already started your school; it practically runs itself. You’ve toured with your cooking show, and you could tour again, but somewhere deep down you know it’d be hollow. The showman, the entertainer—that’s not you anymore. It can’t be you. So where do you go after that? You find a job to while away the time until you can follow everyone else. That, or you waste away. And I don’t think that _ you _ think that’s narratively appropriate either. But you’re just killing time. You’re too powerful for anything else on this earth. You save the whole multiverse and, what, go work a fucking nine to five until the day you die and try to be _ happy _ with that? I don’t think you particularly want to work here. I don’t think you even know what we even do here anymore. 

“But, well. You never stopped working here, technically. Like I said. The job’s yours if you want it. This whole organization—it’s full of people who just don’t know where else to go. So we give them somewhere.” 

Taako cannot make himself look up. _ You waste away. _ Distantly, he is aware of his nails digging deep crescents into the calloused ridges of his palms. He watches them, blurrily, and there’s an ache in his lungs like he’s being plunged deep below icy waters, and he can see himself shaking, and all he can think is _ the polish is chipped, I should get Kravitz to redo them when I get home. _

“Taako?” someone says, from far away. “Taako—” 

“I’ll work for you.” His voice is scraped raw and horrible; _ you waste away, waste away _. “I’ll work for you. As long as I get to work alone. And as long as you don’t say anything like that to me ever fucking again.” 

Raphael: “I overstepped. I apologize. That was unwarranted.” 

“When do I start?” He finally forces himself to meet Raphael’s eyes. They are wet. 

The man shakes his head, looking away. “Taako—” He looks exhausted. It occurs to Taako how new he must be, how lonely, how afraid. 

“When do I _ start _, Raphael?” 

He exhales, slow and even. “In a week, if you’d like.” 

Taako pushes himself to his feet on shaking legs that he forces into steadiness, and he smiles like a knife. “I would.”

“Thank you.” 

In the meantime, Taako goes home. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again for reading <3 please comment if you're inclined to do so! also, i believe i forgot to mention last time that the titles of both the fic and this particular chapter are from Macbeth (thanks Mr. Shakespeare I owe you my life and my depressing titles). i'm not sure when the next update will be as this is all i have written as of posting time. my life is kind of a hellish mess between school, theatre, and college applications, but, and i cannot emphasize this enough, this fic is definitively Not on hiatus; I'm still working on it and I know how it ends. thanks again, both for your patience and for reading!


	3. apotheosis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taako goes to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long to put up! in recompense, i wrote 8k of this 11k chapter today haha. warnings in this one for violence and continued suicide ideation (but not physical self-harm or suicide); there are some thoughts and events in here that may not be a good time for you if you're affected by those sorts of things. at any rate, i hope you like this. thank you all for sticking with me <3

Kravitz is waiting at the too-large kitchen table when Taako gets home. His head is bowed. He looks… haggard. In the way immortals shouldn’t look. 

“You okay?” Taako ventures, and Kravitz’s head snaps up. There is a wild look in his eyes—black pits with glowing red centers fade into their normal earthy brown, but the look—that look doesn’t fade. 

In a moment, Kravitz is standing with a palm planted on the table to support himself and he is stumbling toward Taako, unnecessary breaths forcing their way in and out of his body. 

“Kravitz?” His voice is loud even to his own ears, and finally Kravitz is in his arms, his skin cold, cold, cold. “Are you okay?” he repeats. 

Kravitz’s hands fumbling and anxious on his shoulders, his arms, his ribs. “Worried,” he rasps out. “Just worried.” He swallows, bends ever so slightly to rest his forehead against Taako’s. “Rough couple of days at work. Thought they’d…” He shakes his head. “Just worried, babe. Are _ you _ okay?” 

Taako pulls back to look at him, just in case; he can still hear his heart pounding away in his skull and he swears he’d smelled the faintest scent of blood except that’s ridiculous, Kravitz can’t bleed, but— “I asked first!” 

“And the answer was yes, Taako.” Oh, gods, now he’s looking at him funny. 

“Well. Still. And I’m fine, anyway.”

Kravitz looks lost. With Taako standing now just within arm’s reach, he doesn’t seem to know where to put his hands. 

“I just got home and you weren’t there, and I thought…” 

_ What? What did you think? _There is something hollow carving itself a home in Taako’s chest. “I wasn’t… Krav, I was getting a job. I work for the Bureau again. I’m fine.” And he is. He is. He’s exhausted all other options. 

Kravitz exhales and sits again in one of the empty chairs, tucking his legs under himself like a bird, and Taako smiles in spite of himself. Kravitz breathes out a soft, barely-there laugh when he catches Taako’s eye and shakes his head. 

“I know it’s not… rational of me to worry, Taako. But I got home and you just weren’t there. I looked all over the house, thought maybe you’d just... fallen asleep somewhere, but you hadn’t, so I called up anyone I could think of on the Stones, but none of them knew, and I…” He is hunched, one hand pressed against the arch of his eye socket, one hand in a loose fist on the tabletop. Taako can see every dent in the mahogany where he’s dropped silverware, every wine stain, every place constant use has rubbed to shining. “I was so afraid.” 

Somewhere, Taako’s stomach flips. It all feels like white noise, like the creaking of an old house, like the buzz that lingers in the air around his hands after a good Sunburst spell, like the hum of a ship’s engine. He wants to go to him. He wants to put his hand on top of Kravitz’s, tell him it is all okay, that he has somewhere to go now, but the words are caught, fumbling and thick, on his tongue and in the back of his throat, and he cannot move. 

“Kravitz, I—you gotta know, I’m not… That isn’t...” 

There is a cool hand gently, slowly encircling his wrist as if to test the waters. “I just. Taako. I don’t want to go to the Astral Plane one day and find you there. Okay? That would—that would kill me, Taako.” 

Taako swallows. “You won’t. You won’t.” He feels, suddenly, so tired; everything rushes out of him like waves back into the sea. “You won’t,” he repeats again, unsure if he’d said it in the first place. 

“I know, love,” Kravitz says. Taako isn’t sure if he believes him. He wonders if Kravitz even believes himself. He closes his eyes. It doesn’t seem to matter anymore. 

They stay there for several long moments: Taako, standing, head bowed; Kravitz, seated, holding onto his wrist with one hand and the roughshod table with the other. Each breath rushes through them with the force of a storm, syncopated, mistimed. The plates are collecting dust, unwashed, on the counter. Somewhere, a mouse has burrowed its way into the wall, where it has curled to make a home for the winter. The sun is setting behind a mask of clouds. Taako can see the last gray light fading through the windows over the sink. He is elsewhere again. He thinks maybe if he tried a little harder, concentrated a little more, he might figure out where, but it feels unimportant in the haze that has overtaken him. 

Kravitz’s fingers drop a few inches to brush against Taako’s ring, and he startles. Kravitz huffs out a gentle laugh, not malicious, never malicious, and dips his head to press a featherlight kiss against the ring and then his knuckle, then the delicate bone of his wrist. 

“I love you,” Kravitz says. “I’ll never not love you.” Uncomplicated. Just like that. Lips against skin, demanding nothing.

Taako smiles and closes his eyes, turns his hand to catch Kravitz’s in his, and traces the metal band with his thumb. “You too.” Most days, this is all he can manage. He knows Kravitz will understand. He always does. 

Another beat. Kravitz raises himself to his feet again, careful and slow, as if worried Taako’ll spook and run off. He doesn’t. 

“Sleep now?” Kravitz suggests. Neither of them need to sleep, of course. Kravitz is, well—he’s dead. And Taako’s an elf. It’s the principle of the thing that matters, the ritual. Kravitz braiding up his hair with quick and certain hands, Taako massaging lotion into his cheeks, the rustling of sheets as they slide into bed. The light is dim in their bedroom—a perpetual spell of Faerie Fire hangs outside their window, glowing faintly through the curtains. Maintaining takes only a fraction of his concentration. He remembers being eight, furrowing his brow and clenching his fingers around a tiny bright ball of light, shaking with the effort of keeping it there—

“Sounds good to me,” Taako grins. He wishes he had the energy to collapse dramatically into Kravitz’s arms, and something about his face must convey it, because Kravitz picks him up in a fireman’s carry without question and lets Taako let out a feigned screech of dismay. Taako goes deadweight over Kravitz’s shoulder and laughs. Surprised at himself, he laughs again, and he can feel the Kravitz’s rolling chuckle vibrating against his legs and chest, and he laughs at that too. He lets himself be carried up the stairs, still giggling weakly, until Kravitz gently throws him at the bedspread and he twists midair to land with grace. Kravitz grins at him, there, and Taako feels some quiet warmth reawaken itself in his chest. He blinks away the heat prickling behind his eyes, and an easy smile takes its place, thank the gods; he is so tired of the sad moments, of grief. 

“Come to bed, Kravitz,” he beckons, and Kravitz does. 

* * *

The week, unexpectedly, flies by. 

Taako calls his PR guys back up again that next day, when he finds the energy to. Doesn’t apologize for his anger, but acquiesces enough to put out a statement: “It hurts. But everything will be okay. It always has been. We’ll keep going.” He angles for an ad slipped in there somewhere, and they plead for him to at least mention how he’s been doing in all this, and both ideas are quickly and thoroughly vetoed.

Ren comes to check on him on Wednesday. She knocks on the door, three smart raps, and he’s barely opened it a crack before she’s muscling in the rest of the way. 

“Sooooo, I hear you got a new job, Taako,” she says, placing a pot of something—smells like flowers, but not in the grandma way, and also meat, so he’s intrigued—on his coffee table. 

“Hey, c’mon, Ren,” he protests. “Food goes in the kitchen.” 

“Maybe it’s not food. Maybe it’s a potion that’ll, I don’t know, blow up the damn house. Don’t deflect, alright? Gods, what was I—right. _Job,”_ the drow growls at him, whacking the crockpot with her wand on each emphasized word. “Taako, I’ve known you forever, and I love you with _all_ my heart, but literally why the actual, genuine, _entire_ _fuck_ did you not think to tell me, your _coworker_, that you were seeking full-time employment elsewhere?”  
  
“In my defense,” Taako says blithely, “it is part-time.” 

Ren thwacks him on the shoulder with her wand. “I am going to _ kill _ you! Do you know how fucking _ worried _ I was about you? You don’t answer your stone for weeks on end, the lights are always off at your house, nobody’s seen hide nor hair of you since practically the dinner party, and your PR people were so quiet I thought they were trying to cover up that you’d been killed by the fucking _ Fantasy Mob!” _

“I wasn’t, though,” he points out, and it’s not factually incorrect, but it’s certainly not the right response, either, because Ren falls backward into the nearest armchair, the tip of her wand resting on her forehead like she’s trying to draw the stress out of herself through the thing. “Sorry,” he tacks on, and Ren shakes her head, says nothing for a long moment.

“No, I am. You’re—you’re struggling, Taako, and I get that. I’ve been struggling too, not like you, but I have been. I just was afraid.” 

“You didn’t have to be,” he spits out before he can think about it, and then shakes himself. “No, I—” 

Ren looks infinitely tired. “Yeah. Well. I brought you food, Taako. I hope it’ll be up to your standards.” 

“Ren—you’re like a—I don’t even know what to me, I don’t—I didn’t mean t—”

“I’m glad you’ve got a job now, even if it’s just part-time. The school is running smoothly, though they miss their headmaster.” She stands, rolls her shoulders back, and Taako wants to scream. 

“Don’t do this, Ren,” he says, voice reedy and exhausted, and she wheels on him, mouth open as if ready to yell at him, wand drawn like she’s going to knock some fucking sense back into his skull, give him what he deserves and has had coming to him for so long now—

Ren closes her mouth and drops her arm. His vast house is silent as the night before the Hunger came always was. “I won’t. Taako, I… you know I just want you to get better. I want you to do whatever it takes for that to happen. You can’t live with death like this, half-dead yourself.” 

He can, though. Does. Has. He lives with death, sleeps next to death, fucks death, caresses it. Has dealt with death, for centuries and through this one. Has spent years dying and coming back, dying and coming back. Married death, in the end. Makes dinner for it, holds its hand, lets it braid his hair. Fitting that he would fall in love with Kravitz after everything that he’s seen. 

“I know,” Taako says. “I’m sorry.” And he means it this time, at least enough. 

Ren stays with him until he starts work at the Bureau that Friday. She cooks with him and tells him stories about the staff he hasn’t bothered to get in touch with for too long, drinks with him and lets him talk about the past, those first days with the BOB, his time with the IPRE, the years he spent on the run with Lup. She sleeps on the couch and doesn’t even complain. 

He teleports himself to Neverwinter this time, easy as that, now that he knows where he’s going. Materializing on the sidewalk outside the Bureau of Benevolence, he almost instantly gets trampled by a couple of goliaths, who swear at him loudly, but he almost doesn’t even mind. There’s something spurring him forward now, something that he hasn’t felt in ages. He rushes in through the front door and loiters around the fireplace until Sidd notices him and starts. 

“Hey, Taako!” she calls, racing up to shake his hand enthusiastically enough to startle a snort out of him. “Got the job, then?” 

“Yeah, thanks, Sidd. I start today.” 

She punches the air, grinning wide and bright. “Aw, hell yeah! Guess you’d better see the Director—he tends to give us our assignments directly, and I seriously doubt you’ll be on desk duty.” 

Taako smiles and shakes his head ruefully. “I sure fuckin’ hope not. I came to kill dragons and shit, not read about Merle’s newest humanitarian beach project.” 

Sidd snickers. “Actually, the briefs aren’t too bad. The worst part is honestly just—” she lowers her voice. “—the petitioners. They come here every day howling about the latest injustices our employees committed against them. Nine times out of ten, it’s their own fault or someone else entirely. Like, a village south of Goldcliff got wrecked by a dragon and practically the whole village came shrieking to us about how it was one of our rogue agents. Like, holy shit, y’all, we employ _ dragonborn _, not straight up blue dragons. Damn racists.” 

“Customer service,” Taako says wisely, and Sidd nods. 

“Anyways, Raphael’s probably waiting for you.” 

“Yeah, probably. See ya.” 

Sidd gives him one last sharp-toothed smile before wandering back over to the couches. For his part, Taako makes his way over to the elevator doors and loiters there a few more minutes before just biting the bullet and pressing the up arrow. 

After another harrowing elevator ride, Taako finds himself spat out in front of Raphael again. 

“Sorry,” the new Director ventures, mouth twitching upward from its flat line. 

“You’re not, man, can we just recognize that fact as two people?” 

Raphael snorts gently, shakes his head. “Yeah, alright. Just take the stairs next time, honestly.” 

“Take the—there are fucking _ stairs?” _

He shrugs. “Well, we have to be FOSHA compliant.” 

“Right.” A brief silence. “Anyways, uh, wanna tell me what I’m doin’?” 

The man sighs and laces his fingers together on top of the desk. “Yes, of course. As you might be aware, there’s been more… activity lately. Of the magical, malevolent sort. Old monsters waking up. Villages razed in the frontier. And I know it’s rather below your level, but there’s this ancient blue dragon that completely destroyed an entire settlement a few hours’ travel northeast of Goldcliff.” 

“Oh, so it wasn’t a hypothetical. Cool. Good. Great.” 

“What?” 

“Nothing, sorry, carry on.” 

Raphael blinks and continues. “It’s a blue dragon, so I don’t think it’ll take… reasoning, exactly. The blue dragons are more into, you know, tearing challengers limb from limb.”

Taako laughs. “Cleaving them in twain.” 

“Sure. So… are you in? We can send other people, of course, but I thought it would be good to give you something real right out of the gate,” he says, tapping the tips of his fingers against the desk. 

Another laugh, this time louder. “I—yeah, sure, Director. I really don’t think—listen, man, I’ve killed way nastier motherfuckers than whatever this dragon turns out to be.” 

“Ancient blues are rather, uh, nasty. I genuinely don’t want you to underestimate this creature, Taako. This isn’t a wyrmling, it’s a beast focused on pure evil who has been alive for centuries longer than you have. Do not sell this thing short, because it’s fully capable of destroying you if you have just a couple of strokes of bad luck too close together. It may not be nihilism incarnate but it’s still a damned _ dragon _, and I don’t want to kill our new hire on day one.” 

Taako leans back, holds up his hands in mock surrender. “Alright, alright. Do you want me to bring other people along?” 

Seemingly satisfied, Raphael shrugs. “It’s your mission, your decision.” 

He straightens, ears twitching up. “Carey and Killian still work here, right?” 

At that, the Director cracks a smile. “I’ve been telling them for years they could retire comfortably, but I sincerely doubt they’ve ever wanted comfort in their lives. They’re—Taako, I’m warning you now, they’re getting old. Dragonborn and orcs have about the same lifespans as humans, and gods know they’ve got some wear and tear on them from working here for so long.” 

That lurch, deep in his chest. Raphael’s still smiling at him like he’s made a joke, so Taako grins along with him, but—it can’t really have been that long? _ Wear and tear. _The idea of Killian and Carey being anything other than young, viciously talented, boundlessly energetic warriors, no matter how often he sees them as the aging women they are, is so innately discordant with everything he knows to be true about the world that his mind just rejects the concept. 

“They’ll do just fine, Raph.” 

“Don’t call me that.” 

“Catch you on the flip side, dude!” With that, Taako makes a break for it before the Director can say anything else. 

This time around, he takes the stairs.   
  


* * *

At the bottom of the stairway, Carey and Killian are waiting for him. 

The first thing he notices is that they actually opted to keep the bracers, godsawful as the things were. He, of course, had removed his as soon as it was socially acceptable (...and once he’d figured out how. Lucretia had put one hell of an enchantment on those bracers). But there they are, proudly on their wrists, glinting in the fire-glow of the Bureau of Balance’s lobby. Everyone else had gone in for the tattoo or the patch or something, y’know, normal, after the Day. They didn’t even make the bracers anymore, except as kids’ party favors. Merch, all third-party; they’d jumped on it before he’d gotten a chance. But these—these were the real things. And Taako’d seen the two of them, of course, throughout the years between the Day and now. But it’s jarring still, strange still. That they’d keep that old symbol of what they’d all once been. That’s all. 

Magnus had kept his bracer too. Thick as thieves, the three of them. 

The second thing he notices is that they’re—well, they’re old. They’re old. He knows that about dragonborn, about orcs. About as long-lived as humans, if they’re lucky. Killian is wrinkled. Deep smile lines trace around her eyes and lips. Her skin is worn and freckled from exposure. She’s still unreasonably buff, but the once-tough orc skin is thinned out, stretched in some places and folded in others. And Carey doesn’t wrinkle, scales being what they are, but her horns are long and twisting where they were once stubs. Her scales are dented, chipped. Her eyes are set deep in their sockets. 

They’re both solidly built, arms rippling with well-defined muscle, eyes bright, stance even and loosely coiled like springs. But Taako can’t shake this sense of fragility when he goes to hug them, like if he holds them too tight their bones will splinter. Anxiety twists like a lean beast in his gut, unexplained. 

“Taako!” Carey grins, baring small, sharp fangs. “Heard you were off to slay a dragon!”

“Yeah, it’s all very exciting,” Taako states dryly, and Carey rolls her eyes and punches him lightly on the shoulder.

“C’mon, man, get your spirits up—”

“Classic heroism, innit?” Killian smiles, wry and just a little nervous. Taako smiles back, just as deadpan. It occurs to him that he might rattle them too. It’s not like he’s been grieving out of the public eye—he’s managed to avoid the papers and the press, maybe, but he’s sure his face is plastered all over the damned continent as always. _ Taako Secluded In His Mansion For The Third Month Running. Desperate Taako Applies For Old Job In A Pathetic Attempt To Feel Alive. Taako Heard Screaming At Friend—Is It All Falling Apart For The Birds? Taako Isolated From Sister. The Unbreakable Family Broken. When Is The Taako We All Know And Love Coming Back? Why Is This Happening? Why Did Magnus Have To Die? Why Did Lucretia Have To Follow? Why Didn’t Taako Go With Them? Why Is He Still Alive While They Are Cold And Dead? Why Won’t He Die? _

_ Why Can’t I Just _

_ Fucking _

_ Die—  
  
_

He’s been standing still for too long. 

“Come back to us, man,” Carey says, and there’s the anxiety he’d seen in Killian’s smile, out full force in the tentative, half-joking voice of her wife. 

Taako shakes himself, physically. “I’m here, I’m here, get off my dick. Y’all wanna go kill a big ol’ fuckin’ dragon?” 

Killian laughs at him, and there’s still that little shuddering undertone, but he can brush it off now, he can. “Never wanted anything more in my life.”  
  
“Well that’s just mean, babe,” Carey complains, and turns on her heel to exit the Bureau of Balance to go—wherever it is they’re going. 

On their way out the door, Taako grabs onto Killian’s bicep. “Hey, do you know—holy shit, by the way, how are you so fucking yoked, you’re like seventy-something—how we get there? Like, we have fast-travel, right? We’re not just strolling all the way up the Sword Coast?” 

She pulls a face. “We don’t really….. Do the cannon thing anymore. So we mostly take, like, trains and shit? Or we rent horses. Or we walk. Or we teleport. Depends on urgency, really.” 

Taako almost asks why the cannon thing stopped, almost makes a joke about FOSHA, then remembers, of course, the years-ago cliffside funeral overlooking nothing but clouds like the view from the false moon, ashes in the wind, the whispers of a mechanical accident nobody really wanted to talk about. When you get down to it, everyone’s fragile, in the end. 

“So we’re, like, teleporting, right? I mean, don’t get me wrong, cha’boy’s all about stimulating local business or exercising or whatever, but we’re teleporting, right?” 

Carey, slowing her pace to match theirs, snickers. “Whatever you want, man. We’re just tagging along. You’re a wizard, you’re not really built to fuck shit up on your own, but, I mean, you _ totally _ could.” 

“Not really built for it, no,” Taako muses with a smirk. “But as long as you pull your weight, I don’t mind.”

“How magnanimous of you,” KIllian says, and Taako bows sweepingly and teleports them, in a blink, to the edge of Goldcliff. 

“Oh, okay,” Carey says, blinking in the suddenly glaring sunlight, which just about sums it up. 

It’s hot. Extremely, extremely hot. Unseasonably so. The slight wind whips sand up from the desert earth and it stings at Taako’s skin, and the sun keeps beating down. He feels like he’s going to die, and he’s been here for maybe three seconds. 

“I mean. We’re here,” Taako states. 

“Uh-huh,” Killian replies, squinting. “We sure are.” 

Carey lashes her tail and stretches, basking in the unexpected warmth. “So where are we headed again?” 

It occurs to Taako that he didn’t actually ask exactly where the village was before leaving. Gods, he’s going to get fired on his first day back at his old job, and he used a seventh-level spell to make it happen. A new record, truly. 

Killian grimaces and points off toward the northeast, where smoke is rising somewhere in the distance. “I’d assume somewhere over there.” Thank fuck for Killian. 

“Yes, you’re right, absolutely! I was just going to say the same thing!”

* * *

  
When they reach what was once the village, it is deadly quiet. Aside from the hissing, muted crackle of the fires still burning in the pits of charred houses, nothing is making a sound. Nothing is moving. As they’d approached, Killian, Carey, and Taako had all been talking, bantering, laughing—psyching themselves up for the battle ahead—but slowly they’d fallen silent. Out of respect, maybe. Or maybe just out of fear. There’s a different kind of anxiety with its claws in Taako’s torso now, one that buzzes low in his stomach and high in his throat, makes his muscles itch. He aches to run, to jump, to pull out the shortsword he’s never once fought with in all his years of adventuring and drive it into flesh just to feel that certain rush of satisfaction he’s seen in so many warriors’ faces. His hands dance from his hair—pulled back into a loose bun—to his glaive to the sleeves of his shirt to the components pouch knotted at his belt. He gets the feeling that they should fan out, search the rubble for anything the villagers might have missed, scout for tracks the dragon might have left. But he can’t bring himself to leave their sides, the pairs of boots shuffling through ashes and sand. Killian has a crossbow in her scarred hands; Carey has her knives. They don’t look at each other so much as they hold each other in peripheral vision, afraid to glance away entirely even for a moment but unwilling to make eye contact. They pick their way through the wreckage. The thing about the village is that it was destroyed wholesale. No building was spared; none of them can even hazard guesses at what these charcoal frames might have once held. The road is blackened with smoke. Not even bones remain. The earth is, faintly, still hot beneath their thick-soled shoes. 

Carey curls her lips, exposing once again those daggerlike fangs. “This was not a common beast.” 

They are standing in town square. Radiating out around them is an apocalyptic, crumbling wreck. Taako feels, suddenly, so very small. 

“No,” he agrees. 

Killian grunts assent. “So where is it now?” 

As if planned by a deity with a keen sense of humor, it is at that moment that they hear the far-off monumental _ whoosh _ of wind being displaced by a pair of massive wings. 

Another. 

Another. 

There is a faint dark dot in the eastern sky. 

Less faint now. 

Killian drops to a knee and trains the crossbow at the sky, graying brows knitting together. Carey paces, bouncing up and down slightly, all nervous energy. She twirls her knives between her talons until they are a blur of silver and Taako is still just—standing there. Fingers resting on the cold handle of his glaive. The dragonborn shoots him a look out of the corner of her eye and he has to look away, take the handle into his palm more firmly, lift it up into the air, prepared to strike. He is here. Here. 

“Can’t really judge how far away it is,” Killian mutters, gaze still fixed on the approaching creature. She’s right; he can just begin to make out the shape of it from here, but it’s so huge it could be anywhere between them and the horizon. But the shape is horrifying enough as it is, even at such a distance. Its wings are huge and spread wide across the sky, and as it hurtles closer, the golden day darkens bit by bit. Taako can begin to pick out the jagged horns weighing its head down, the hooked claws, the viciously spiked tail, the lightning crackling around its teeth and sparking off of its scales. 

“Too close for my taste, you know, as a personal preference,” Taako offers, but the joke’s a little too late and a little too honest to land. 

Carey just grimaces. “So… game plan, team?” 

Languidly, Taako says, “I like the plan of us not dying and it definitely one hundred percent dying.” 

“I was thinking maybe some specifics, how about?” the dragonborn bites out, voice pinched and angry. Taako winces at how it shakes, goes thin. He doesn’t want to—upset her. That was never the idea. 

Killian opens her mouth to say something, but he’ll never find out what, because the dragon is overhead now and just that knowledge knocks the words out of all of them. 

Its scales are burnished cobalt wreathed in sparks, its eyes an unnatural, electric blue. It came up on them so fast Taako’s mind reels with it. The mouth is panting and open, hot breath blasting down on them, and just one of its incisors is as tall as he is. There’s a horror inherent to something so vast and powerful, so focused on precise destruction. He remembers when Klaarg’s daughter was born, a big tumbling mass of accidental destruction, tearing up his best furniture whenever she came to visit as a young bugbear. It was in her nature to destroy, even by accident; it wasn’t as if she knew her own strength. This dragon wasn’t like that. This dragon knew what it was doing, knew it could do otherwise, knew, intimately, the pain an animal felt when it died, knew it had the strength to cause that pain on an infinite scale. 

And that was _ why _ it did what it did. 

Not for the first time in his life, Taako suddenly feels like a prey animal. 

“Shit,” Carey says, and throws a knife directly at its eye. Quick, easy, the dragon flutters its eyelid closed, and the knife bounces off even those comparatively weak scales. 

“Shit,” Killian echoes. 

The dragon roars. The breath knocks Taako off his feet—Killian and Carey twist awkwardly and recover, trained warriors that they are, but Taako hits the ground hard, lands on his palms and feels something snap in his wrist. This particular brand of pain is sharp and bright and agonizing, and he _ screams _ as he rolls into a crouch, world going briefly blurry. Killian and Carey, thank gods, have already leapt into action as the dragon settles itself on the ground a couple hundred feet away from them. It’s talking, now, voice growling and inhuman. At first Taako wonders if he’s going crazy, if he’s lost everything and language too, but it occurs to him that it’s speaking Draconic. It says something that makes Carey scream in rage, throat raw, and charge at him, old joints still as nimble as they had been decades ago. Killian races after her, throwing the crossbow aside as she grabs for the massive longsword strapped to her back. 

Taako manages to stagger to his feet and dashes toward the beast, keeping his damaged wrist close to his chest. Nondominant hand, but a handicap nonetheless, reflects the part of him that feels removed from all of this, the part of him that’s wondering what Kravitz will say if he comes home like this. When he comes home. He can feel his boots crushing the ashy ground, the dust he’s kicking up settling on his legs. He senses all this from what feels like a great distance, along with the stabbing pain that comes from each movement that jars his arm. 

The dragon raises its head and stares down at them, malevolent heat radiating off of it. The air crackles with static electricity for just a moment that makes Taako’s hair stand straight up before the beast roars and then everything seems to break. The world fractures around him, cut through with piercingly bright light. This time he manages to dart out of the way hardly in time, but as he looks around desperately, he sees Carey stagger and hit the ground, watches the burn marks appear suddenly on her face, her arms, watches the fire catch on her cloak. The dragonborn rolls desperately and the fire disappears, smoke rising, but Taako doesn’t miss the way her face twists in pain as she throws herself at the ground. Killian also just barely managed to dodge, he realizes, and she’s still running at the beast. Carey picks herself up and keeps going, so Taako does too. 

After that, things come in bits and pieces. 

The flash of furious pale eyes. The glint of blades. His hand raising up the glaive. Bursts of bright light as he closes his eyes tightly. A deep, growling bellow. Hitting the ground again and again. Slashes of pain across his chest. Pounding agony in his head. The rush of magic leaving his body, the tide back out to sea. Yelling—his yelling, Killian’s, Carey’s. Light blue scales, burnt black. Dark blue scales, burnt black. The smell of scorched hair. More yelling. 

He doesn’t know how long they fight. Only that, in the end, he deals the killing blow. 

It’s a blast of light. He doesn’t even know which spell it is, just that he jabs his glaive and light comes out and arcs straight into the throat of the dragon, and it staggers and collapses, right there in the center of the empty husk of the town. 

Taako falls to his knees and waits for his senses to come back to him. There’s a faint ringing in his ears—everything is coming from so far away. His vision is blurred. His fingers feel numb. He tries to dig his nails into his palms, tries to pull himself back into his body, but either his muscles won’t move or he just can’t feel it, that little pain nothing to his bruised cheekbone, to his burnt and torn skin, to his shattered rib. 

Somebody is picking him up in strong, sturdy arms. Somebody is holding him gently, lifting slow and careful so they don’t jostle him, don’t hurt him. 

“Is that—?” His voice is so quiet, barely above a breath, but it still cracks. “Are you—?”

A rueful, quiet laugh that he can feel through his entire body. “Not yet, buddy.” His vision focuses. Killian’s face hovers above him, bruised all to hell and soft with worry. He closes his eyes again. He hates himself for hoping. 

Time passes like that for a while: a vague haze, marked only by movement and the soft rumbling of Killian conversing with Carey. As his senses return, bit by bit, he comes to realize that Carey has perched her small, hollow-boned body on Killian’s back—she, too, is grievously injured. 

“Fuckin’ wizards,” Killian tells him, once she notices his eyes are relatively clear and trained on her. “Wizards and their low constitution. Just get beefy like the rest of us.” 

Carey swats at the back of her head with an open palm, and Killian ducks away, laughing. “Cut the guy a break, Kills!” 

They fall into companionable silence. Taako loves them, he realizes. He’s bleeding onto Killian’s shirt. Has been for probably an hour and a half now. She hasn’t mentioned it or made him shift positions. He’s still shaking, and his head feels empty. Magical exhaustion, physical exhaustion, emotional exhaustion. It’ll do a number on you. 

He clears his throat and speaks for the first time in hours, after a while. “Should we call for a cleric?” His voice is little more than a rasp. Goldcliff is on the horizon, shining in the sunset. 

“Oh. Shit. Yeah. Do you have Merle’s frequency on your stone?” Killian asks. Carey has gone to sleep, catlike, draped across her shoulders. 

Taako looks at her, then, for real. She is old, he remembers. Old and battle-weary. She doesn’t walk anymore so much as she stumbles forward, muscles tense with the effort of keeping each step as steady as it can be for his benefit. She’s injured, too. Just as scorched as any of the rest of them. Coming down from post-battle adrenaline. 

“We can stop here if you want.” 

She shakes her head stubbornly. “No. Just call Merle. See how fast he can get here.” And she walks on. 

With trembling fingers, Taako grabs the stone of farspeech from its chain around his neck, taps it lightly, tunes it to Merle’s frequency. “Hey. Merle. You there?” 

“Taako!” his voice comes back, startling, as it always is, in its loud jovialty. “How are ya, man?” 

“Well, I just fought an ancient blue dragon. Why don’t you hop on over to Goldcliff and see?” 

“What the hell kinda stuff are you getting up to out there without me?” Merle half-asks, half-laughs, and Taako rolls his eyes. 

“We’re, like, on the verge of death, so if you could maybe hurry up and…?” It’s not really hyperbole, honestly. Killian looks about two seconds away from collapsing and spilling all three of them into the hot desert sand of the wastes outside Goldcliff, and then they probably will actually die of exposure. Wouldn’t that be something. _ Multiverse Hero Taako Dies From Getting A Little Too Hot About Fifteen Minutes From Civilization After Surviving Centuries Of Ancient, Malevolent Forces Actively Trying To Murder Him And Destroy Everything He Loves, More At Eight. _

“Ah. On my way, then,” Merle says. 

“Thanks,” Taako says, and clicks off the stone. “There we go. It’ll be fine. Hopefully he still knows what a healing spell is.” 

Killian groans under her breath and lurches on. It’s still quiet. Taako wishes he felt strong enough to walk, wishes he could help in some way other than holding tight to Killian’s arm and trying his best not to move. 

It feels like years pass under that unforgiving sun. It goes hazy with red clouds, sinking lower and lower in the sky as if dragged down by some great weight. The horizon shimmers with heat. His throat is parched. Nobody is trying to talk. When he looks up at Killian, her eyes are fixed on that wavering horizon, face tense. A cut on her cheek oozes blood. 

Finally, as they reach the gates of the city, Merle pops into existence with a blaze of light and a faint _ whee-ee! _that frankly could’ve been him, his magic, or the deity that let him cast a spell completely outside his class for some indecipherable reason. “Hey guys!” he calls out with that trademark joy before he takes them in and his face falls. 

Carey cracks open a single eye. “‘S that Merle I hear?” She grins at him, exposing a couple of teeth that weren’t missing at the beginning of the day. 

“Unfortunately yes,” Taako groans, letting his head fall backward dramatically, which feels like a good idea until pain shoots through his neck and he has to bolt upright in Killian’s arms again so he doesn’t scream. 

Gently, Killian sets him down, keeping a firm hold on his shoulders so he doesn’t full on collapse, but as soon as she takes her hands away, he begins to sway without even meaning to. 

Merle reaches up and guides Taako down to a seated position. His eyes feel heavy. He just wants to rest. 

The dwarf touches his upper arm and murmurs something under his breath. Slowly, light and a soothing coolness builds in his arm and spreads through his whole body. Every second, it hurts a little less to breathe. He can feel skin and muscle knitting itself back together, scorch marks fading, bone setting itself. When Merle takes his hand away, Taako almost wants to cry—he’s nowhere near fully healed. His muscles ache, his scratches sting, the burns are raw and agonizing. Already, they are only scars on the surface, the pain is lessened, but he feels them, deep in his bone marrow. He doesn’t know if they’ll ever leave. 

Merle hears his whimper and sighs, gives him an affectionate tap on the ear. “Sorry, kiddo. The healing’s just a salve. We—well, we do what we can. Everything else takes time.” 

Taako snuffles, curls forward to rest his head against his forearms. “I thought I told you to stop fuckin’ callin’ me that.” 

Carey and Killian are looking away respectfully, fiddling with some bandages and healing potions they found stashed in the bottom of Carey’s bag. 

“Well, I didn’t listen,” Merle says. Taako’s eyes are closed, but he can see the way his lips quirk up to one side, the way his skin wrinkles, the way his beard moves. 

“Thanks. For the healing. Not for not listening.” 

The dwarf snorts, taps his ear again, which Taako twitches away irritably, but he’s smiling, shaky yet still there. They’d always used to do that, back on the Starblaster. Mimicking at first, because that’s what he and Lup did to each other when a hug was too much. Then genuinely. Until it was their own thing that they all shared. _ I’m okay. You’re okay, too. I love you. _

Absurdly, Taako wants to cry again. 

* * *

  
He comes home triumphant, or something approximating triumphant. He has to rest in the Bureau’s headquarters for a couple of hours—he was way the fuck out of any spell slot above level, like, two—and he feels better for the rest, but really nothing compares to how he feels when he stumbles home on his own two legs and runs through the massive doors of his mansion. Gods. He’d never had so much as a hut as a kid, and now where was he? 

“Kravitz!” he calls out, darting through his living room on unsteady coltish legs. “I’m home, Krav!” 

No response. His heart drops. _ Gone away on a business trip, then. _

Then, from the kitchen: “Taako? Is that you?” 

Something in his chest unknots; he whoops victoriously and races into the other room. “Yeah, babe!” 

Kravitz looks up from where he’s cooking dinner—oh, hell yeah, he can smell the sauce from here—and grins at him. “You’re back.” 

“Yeah,” he says, and all Taako can do is smile back and wrap his arms around him from behind, tuck his nose into the divot between his shoulderblades through his loose-fitting black shirt. 

“Almost died yet?” Kravitz asks conversationally, and Taako snorts. 

“Oh, for sure. Fought an ancient blue dragon today. Basically got our asses kicked, but we won, so...” 

Kravitz chuckles under his breath and turns, tilts Taako’s chin up, and kisses him, long and slow. When he pulls back and Taako’s eyes flutter open, Kravitz smiles. “Of course you did, my dear.” 

Taako grimaces and buries his head in the crook of Kravitz’s neck. “Stop bein’ so fuckin’ sappy,” he mumbles into his collarbone, and the other man laughs deep in his chest and pulls him up to kiss him again. 

“You did wonderfully,” Kravitz says against his lips. 

“Stop,” he complains again with significantly less conviction, and, damn it, Kravitz can definitely feel how he’s smiling, as close as they are, based on how he laughs again. 

“You’re beautiful and amazing and ferocious and I love you,” Kravitz murmurs, and pulls Taako tighter against him, hand coming up to curl in his shock of slightly-singed curly hair. 

Taako sighs and wishes it didn’t sound as blissful as it did. He kisses back for a long moment, relishes in the little noises Kravitz makes, in the shifting of muscles under his skin, in the firm, steady press of lips. 

When he pulls away, the other man makes a soft sound of protest and follows him, eyes closed. 

Taako laughs, only a little unkindly. “Your sauce is gonna burn, babe. It smelled so good.” 

Kravitz huffs, brushing a few strands of hair out of Taako’s eyes. “I don’t care about the sauce.” 

“I do! That’s my dinner! Some of us,_ who will remain unnamed to protect their identity, _ might not have to eat to survive, but I—” 

He steals one last kiss before smiling so genuine and sweet that Taako’s stomach does a flip and then turning back to stirring the sauce. 

* * *

He has a couple days off after that. Barry and Lup come to visit before their mission with Kravitz—another necromantic cult apparently popped up in the Sword Mountains, fuck’s sake—and he makes them dinner and lets them beat him handily at cards. It’s only a matter of time, anyway, until he makes them play Yahtzee with his loaded dice, and then they’ll see. Oddly, they’ve never taken him up on the offer. 

Barry and Kravitz turn in early to go talk about science and death or whatever, or maybe just to give him and Lup some space. Either way, he appreciates it. The weather is getting colder now as the months wear on, but the sky is clear tonight, so he and Lup are outside on the third-story balcony, nestled in blankets on the porch swing. 

Lup rests her head on his shoulder and sighs, gaze fixed firmly on this world’s constellations. They’re similar to the ones they had back home but not the same. Taako finds himself looking for the Great Dragon, for the Messenger’s Bird, for the Warrior Wolf, and has to content himself with Ursa Major, Cygnus, and Sirius. 

“How are you holding up, ‘Ko?” 

“What is it with you people and shitty nicknames I’ve protested against for centuries?” Taako demands, prodding at her stomach. 

She yelps and whacks at his knee. “That’s the fun part! And you didn’t answer my question.” 

“Dunno,” he shoots back. “How are you holding up, Lulu?” 

“Oh, fuck off.” 

“Only if you do.” 

Lup snorts and resettles herself, leaning against him. “Unlikely.” 

Taako sighs and lets her. “Well, there you go.” They’re silent for a long moment. The stars don’t move. “I don’t know.” 

“Don’t know what?” 

“How I’m holding up. I don’t know.” 

Anybody else might have asked for clarification. He would’ve struggled to explain it to them, his moods as changeable as the sea, the constant rasp in his throat like the common cold, the sinking feeling in his gut he gets every time he thinks too hard about anything but the present, his rages, his passions, the days he spends white-knuckled on the ground staring at nothing. But also the days he spends laughing with old friends, taking long walks through the countryside hand in hand with Kravitz, the elaborate recipes he makes for himself, the spells he’s come up with, his old-new employment at the Bureau of Benevolence. 

Lup simply nods, grabs his hand, squeezes tight. 

He breathes in slow. “I just—it’s not fair. I’m still alive, and they’re—not. And they were so much—” 

“That’s what I’d try to remember.” 

“What?” 

“You’re still alive. And they’re not.” 

Taako closes his eyes. The night air is cold. His sister, dead as she is, is warm. The stars do not change.

* * *

He wakes up in his own bed, alone. When he makes his way downstairs, finally, there’s a note in Kravitz’s scratchy handwriting on the kitchen table. 

“Called away earlier than expected. Breakfast in fridge—Lup made it, don’t worry. Back by tomorrow evening. All our love, Kravitz, Barry, & Lup.” 

He’s not really a fan of goodbye notes. 

So Taako teleports to Neverwinter, kicks down the door to the Bureau of Benevolence, and demands an audience with the Director. Then he remembers he can just take the stairs, so he does that. 

Raphael seems unfazed by his entrance, blinking slowly. “Welcome back. I heard the ancient blue dragon thing went—well, about as well as an ancient blue dragon thing can go.” 

“Yeah, just about. Can I have another mission?” 

He raises a well-manicured eyebrow. “So soon after the last? Taako, you’re an asset, but even you have to recover.” 

“I’m good to go, dude. Just let me fight something.” _ Do good recklessly. _

The Director hums in acknowledgment, leaning back in his seat. “Well. Can’t argue with that.” For a long moment, he thumbs through packets of briefs on his desk, discarding each one until he finally hits one midway through the stack and that gives him pause. 

“A pair of fire giants are waging war on frontier towns in an attempt to take over the land, allegedly. You wanna go check that out?” 

“Sounds good,” Taako says, taking the packet and skimming it. 

“Call for backup if you need it,” Raphael cautions him, and Taako nods earnestly, absolutely not going to do that. Based on how the Director’s eyes follow him as he leaves, he’s aware of that, too. 

He succeeds. 

On his own. 

No help needed. 

It’s a close call, sure. Diplomacy fails about three sentences into his first exchange with the giants, and he has to burn a few good spells on taking them down, and one of them almost manages to shatter his left leg, but he gets out of it with, essentially, a couple scrapes and a hell of an ego boost. He doesn’t even need to call Merle to come and heal him, just bought a horse and rode back to Neverwinter like that, prancing jauntily down Main Street as people stop and stare at the triumphant, resplendent Taako, lit up like a young god by the late fall sun. Whispers follow him where he goes, which is nothing new, but the naked awe and joy in their eyes almost shake him. He dismounts and sweeps back up to the office where Raphael waits, who almost cracks a smile at the wild happiness in Taako’s every movement. 

“So you did it,” he confirms, and Taako just laughs. 

It becomes the new routine. He goes home to Kravitz, entertains his friends, cooks and does paperwork for the school and invents wondrous new magic and even tries to do upkeep on the damn garden Merle loves so much. And he trains. Tirelessly. For the first time in decades, he is training. Wakes up at dawn to run five miles, spars with anybody willing to reteach him swordwork, practices his spells until every shot is clear and precise and exquisitely painful. He comes to love the physicality of it, the ache and burn in his muscles as he pushes them to their limit, the bone-deep exhaustion that comes with the perfect moment of magic, the newfound dexterity in his limbs. The knowledge that he’s getting better when he looks at himself in the mirror, examines these new muscles, the gleam in his eye, the magical energy that radiates off of him like the ripples of a rock thrown in a still pond. 

And when Kravitz leaves for days on end, he travels to Neverwinter and asks for a mission. 

Every once in a while, Raphael will insist on sending somebody along _ (“No offense, Taako, but there’s no way in hell that I’m gonna send you to fight a kraken alone,”), _ but for the most part, he’s left to his own devices to negotiate and fight as he pleases. It’s not so much the killing he enjoys—who the fuck would enjoy that?—but the elation of doing something he’s _ good _ at, something he’s practiced so hard to refine and improve. Something he’s probably the best at out of everybody on this planet. It comes easily, the rush of magic through his veins like it’s more blood than his blood, the swing of the sword, the leap and flip and roll. The falling without hurting. 

He isn’t scared anymore, going into battle. Nothing scares him anymore. 

The vicious satisfaction of winning drives him forward. People tell him he is looking well, and he grins fiercely at them, expands his brand, shakes the hands of kids who rush up to him in the streets of Neverwinter and tell him he’s their hero, won’t you please sign this paper? He rules, sort of, in his house on a hill, eyes sparkling. And Kravitz watches it all, a furrow in his brow, hesitance in his touch when he asks Taako to come to bed. 

“No,” Taako tells him. “I want to look at the stars.” 

It’s the still moments he’s most afraid of. He oscillates wildly between seeking them out whenever he can and avoiding them like the plague. 

He watches the sky. It doesn’t change. The weather is so cold now, all the time. Frost gathers on his flowers and herbs and fruit trees. He’s waiting for the first snow of the season, but it stubbornly refuses to come. There are days on end of unforgiving, freezing sun, as the world cracks beneath it and turns to ice, but no snow. He doesn’t sleep. Hasn’t in maybe a month. Doesn’t need to, anyway. What he needs to do is work, to chart the stars, to cast, to cook, to talk, to run, to fight, and fight, and fucking _ fight _ until every bit of evil in this world is purged out. Nothing is wrong with him. He is getting better. It’s the world that is getting worse. 

He tells Kravitz all of this one day, reading on the couch together, and the other man says nothing, just shakes his head and bites his lip, holds Taako close to him. _ Nothing is wrong, Krav. You don’t have to. I’m fine. _

At night, he walks out onto the third-floor balcony, leaving Kravitz sleeping in bed, chest rising and falling with breaths he doesn’t need to keep taking. He leans out over the banister, eyes fixed on the stars. He never sees a comet; they just wink down at him, unmoving. It still doesn’t snow. 

Killian dies of old age. Carey follows four days later. They are buried together beneath an old oak on the land they bought together after the Day. A piece of rock from the false moon marks their grave.

Kravitz starts calling his old friends to visit him again, keep him company: Merle, Angus, even Davenport once. Lup and Barry come over more often. But they cannot pierce through this layer of purpose he has coated himself in. _ Can’t you see I don’t want to stay in for a quiet evening? I want to _ do _ something. _ For the first time in months, he has energy, and they are begging him to stay still. He takes more missions, even when Kravitz and everyone else are home. It’s gratifying to come home late and find them waiting for him, smiling when he comes in smiling, telling them about the latest cult leader he’s struck down, the latest despotic aberration vying for power, the latest young chromatic dragon threatening the idyllic lives of small-town people. Taako grins at the crowd of his friends in his living room. _ Just like the good old days, right? _

He doesn’t fucking understand that constant worry in the lines of their faces. He is the most fearsome wizard to ever live, and his power is unmatched, and he is going to save _ everybody _. 

(He is profoundly alone, and he is getting old.) 

One night, Raphael gets his stone’s frequency from—somebody, maybe Sidd (maybe, and his heart twists sickly at the thought, Kravitz), and calls him after he’s just gotten home from a mission. 

“Taako. I know it’s late, but can you come to the office? It won’t take long.” 

Taako casts a look upstairs, where Kravitz is probably asleep. “I… yeah, man. Sure. What’s goin’ on?” 

His voice is tense. “I’ll tell you when you get here.” 

The Bureau of Benevolence is dark when he arrives. There are a few lights on, mostly from candles. The barebones night shift shuffles around. A bugbear nods at him respectfully as he walks in, and he nods back. A halfling starts to say something to him, but seems to reconsider for some reason and backs off, goes back to sweeping. He takes the steps two at a time on the way up, and when he gets to the top he’s hardly even out of breath. 

Knocking on the open doorframe, Taako says, “Can I come in, Director?” 

“Of course. I’m sorry to pull you away from home again soon. But there are two things I need to discuss with you before morning.” 

“Fire away, by all means.” He spreads his arms magnanimously. 

Raphael nods, worrying at his lip with his teeth. “Well. Firstly, I’m here to offer you a mission. A potentially very deadly one. It’s a—” 

He cuts him off. “Raphael, you know I’ll take the most dangerous job you have. Any time. Any place. Any reason.” 

The human man lets out a short, strained laugh. “Actually, Taako, that was the second thing I wanted to talk about. I don’t think that…” 

Taako crosses his arms, digs his nails into his own biceps. “Yeah?” 

“There’s no good way of saying it. I’m worried you’ve become… myopic.” In that moment, Taako is reminded so completely of Lucretia that he almost wants to scream, those serious eyes, the downward turn of the mouth, the folded hands, the gracefully upright posture. He could’ve been her son, maybe, or a brother. But Lucretia was, he knows, alone. It was kind of her thing. 

“Elucidate.” 

“Taako, you throw yourself into any mission I give you with a level of recklessness that borders on suicidal. Everyone else, they see it as bravery, as courage, as the hero of every plane and universe filling his rightful role. They don’t see that you’re going to die one day. Sooner rather than later if you keep this up. I don’t think I could live with myself if I let you keep going on missions without telling you that.” His voice is even, but Taako can see how his hands shake. 

“Well. Thank you for your honesty.” 

He inclines his head ever so slightly but does not break eye contact, like he’s afraid Taako will pounce and tear him to shreds if he ever loses sight of him. “Of course.” 

“But I told you when you hired me: don’t ever speak to me like you did on that day.” There is blood underneath his fingernails. His voice is deadly calm. “I’m going to keep working for you. This place is my home now. These are my friends. But I don’t forget these things, Director. Ever.” 

The Director nods again. 

“Now. Tell me about this new mission.” 

* * *

It’s going to be a big one. A group of rebels, out in the Felicity Wilds, planning to overthrow Lord Artemis. Not yet big enough to warrant all the resources to send the lord’s guard charging in to snuff out the insurrection, but just big enough to warrant Taako, Defender of the Multiverse to come in and wreck their whole shop. Should be a hell of a fight. Raphael had quietly suggested that he should take some backup, and Taako had laughed outright. After the conversation they’d had, the Director didn’t press him on it. He didn’t want to risk them, and he knew he could handle himself. He could. 

He would leave in the morning. 

In the meantime, Taako goes home. 

When he goes upstairs to get ready for sleep, Kravitz is sitting cross-legged on the bed, hands twisting together. 

“Good to see you again,” Kravitz says, and Taako smiles and kisses him. 

“How are you?” Taako asks, the other man’s face in his hands. 

Kravitz snorts. “Alright. Better now that you’re here. Come to bed, babe.” 

“Soon,” he says, and wanders into the bathroom to wash his face. He does not miss the way Kravitz’s eyes follow him sadly. They’ve done that a lot lately. 

After about fifteen minutes, he comes back to bed. Kravitz wraps his arms around him, and Taako snuggles back into him but keeps his eyes open. He’s not tired enough to sleep. 

“He’s sending you away again, isn’t he?” Kravitz asks, just when he’s on the edge of a trance. 

“Yeah. Breaking up an insurrection in the Felicity Wilds.” 

Kravitz laughs humorlessly, and his arms tighten. Taako’s ribs still ache from the fight with the dragon and a hundred other fights besides. 

“Wake me up before you go, okay?” So human, after everything. 

“Of course.” 

Come morning, Taako slips out of his arms, grasp loosened by sleep. He looks so peaceful, lying there in white sheets, snoring softly. Beautiful. Taako kisses him lightly on the temple and does not wake him. 

* * *

The journey doesn’t take long. It never does, these days. He could jump between planes if he wanted to, has done as much before, will do as much again. The trees are almost familiar. He remembers a chimera, remembers a snobbish young human, remembers the closest thing to hell on earth. He wonders what would have happened if he had died then, in the depths of Wonderland. If they’d succeeded in stealing everything from him then. 

He’s not sure. 

At any rate, there’s a peace to walking in the forest at dawn. It’s cold. The sky is gray and dull as a dry river-stone over his head. His boots crunch on frost and slip every once in a while on sodden leaves. Somewhere, a bird is crying. Allegedly, the rebel group’s camp is nearby. 

After a half-hour of hiking, he hears it: speech in Common, initially quiet but growing louder as he approaches. They’re just—talking. He hears an echoing shriek of laughter that’s shushed only to be met with more laughter. Taako shoulders his glaive and slinks closer, suddenly hyperaware of every noise he makes. He peers around a tree to see the mouth of a cavern gaping in the ground. The rebel group, he assumes, has made their home in the cave. Clever enough. Not many nature explorers like those who usually visit the Felicity Wilds particularly want to clean out what looks very much like an imposing dungeon. Unfortunately for him, it means only one entrance that’s very likely guarded and only one means of egress if things go to hell. 

Taako allows himself the indulgence of swearing quietly under his breath before stalking forward, casting Invisibility on himself. As soon as he casts another spell or makes an attack, it’ll dissipate, but it’ll allow him inside if nothing else. He slips out into the clearing, treading carefully—it doesn’t matter how invisible he is if he leaves footprints in the grass or rustles too many leaves. At the mouth of the cavern, there’s a guard, as he expected. She’s sitting on the ground, leaned up against a stone, in light armor and a heavy winter cloak, eyes half-closed lazily. With the hand not resting on her sword, she’s stroking the thick coat of a sheepdog curled at her feet. 

“Gonna snow today,” she says to the dog. “Mark my words.” The dog snuffles at the hem of her pants and wags its tail. She laughs, presses a kiss to the top of its head. “Glad someone’s on my side.” The other guard, a young elven man, snickers at her fondly. She turns her gaze to stare right through Taako. 

He swallows and steps forward toward the entrance of the cave, giving the dog a wide berth. _ You’re not here to kill them. Just to route them. _He presses onward slowly, delicately stepping around loose rocks and pausing to let his eyes adjust to the darkness of the cave. There are far more people down here than he’d expected. The tunnel widens into an arching, cavernous stone room with a hole in the top for smoke to escape through. A roaring, crackling fire burns in the middle of the room. It is full of rebels, all talking languidly as they wake up to the early morning light through the roof. It’s not hard to find the leader; he is seated on a dais on the other side of the massive room that seems to serve as a dining hall, communal bedroom, and common area. He moves silently between the people, who don’t seem to notice his passing. 

He holds the invisibility until he’s right in front of their commander before dropping it instantly. “Hey,” he says. “I’m Taako.” 

There’s a satisfying dramatic gasp throughout the hall as people notice him. The leader, a half-orc man, stays quiet, watching him with steely eyes. 

“I assume you were sent by the Bureau to strike us down,” he states in a deep, rumbling voice. 

Taako’s mouth pulls to the side. “Yes,” he admits. “Well—not strike. Ideally you surrender before I have to do anything like that.” 

The commander shakes his head flatly. “No. We believe in our cause. We are going to destroy Neverwinter’s ruling class. We do not care who we have to kill to make that happen. Not even you.” He does not sneer or scoff. He just states it as fact. 

Irrationally, Taako is furious. He can feel his hands shaking again, thrusts his glaive forward to compensate. “Then I’ll have to kill you all.” His voice echoes too loud in the chamber and he winces. 

The leader stares him down. “You against all of us? I know who you are, Taako, but I like our odds. I know you do not bring backup.”

Taako sneers and turns his head to gaze out over all of the crowd, who are now watching silently, then turns back to the leader. “I’ll fucking kill all of you.” 

The half-orc curls his lip, pulls a greataxe from his back. “I would like to see you try.” And with that, he swings. 

Taako leaps back gracefully, pulls out his shortsword, and impales the leader through the chest. A scream goes up through the crowd, terror that snaps into fury within seconds, and hundreds of pairs of feet pound against the ground as they charge. 

He jumps into the crowd and races for the exit. He can do this. He can— 

He whips around to throw a Fireball at the group, doesn’t watch it land; the screams and the flames licking at his heels are evidence enough. He can hear his heartbeat in his ears. People are in front of him, behind him, around him. Eventually, he can move forward no further; he is forced to stop running and fight in a circle. It’s a training exercise he’s practiced at the Bureau a hundred thousand times. A simple one at that. You are given a circle with a radius of five feet. You do not let anybody into that circle. If you do, you are dead. 

It is the only thing keeping him alive. 

The world fractures into a thousand pieces, as it always does when he fights, mind driven wild with adrenaline and magic. He sees—hundreds of pieces of metal glimmering like stars, exquisitely beautiful and painful and bright. Faces twisted and split open with rage, crumpling flat or freezing with their mouths still wide with screams. And blood. So much blood. It’s on his hands, covering his skin, slipping beneath his feet. He can taste it, coppery and foreign, in his mouth. It gets in his eyes. He casts so many spells he loses track of what he has and hasn’t used, jabs his glaive forward in part of this manic dance only for nothing to come out, misses a step, has to whirl desperately with his shortsword to cover the gap. His breath comes short and fast and rasping, a stab in his lungs with every inhale. He screams furiously and fights forever and still the people keep coming in floods, so many different faces and bodies that they all blur together, and they’re climbing over the corpses of their friends and brothers to get at him and still they keep coming, and he is so fucking exhausted, and he tries to run then, and somebody knocks the shortsword out of his hands with a blow to his wrist and he howls, animalistic, wheels around, kills another ten with a spell of his own making and a slash of his glaive, runs, runs—

Someone knocks him to the ground, pins him there with a foot on his lower back. Taako tries to twist, to beg, to cast a spell, to do anything, but the glaive fell out of his hands when he hit the ground, and one of his legs was shattered from someone’s warhammer, and his wrist was broken by the butt of a longsword, and he hit his head on a rock, and he is screaming at himself in the back of his head, screaming, screaming, and there are sobs he hasn’t let loose in months heaving out of his throat so hard it shakes his whole body, and he thinks of Kravitz sleeping still in their wedding bed, of Angus waking up in the morning to cook his daughter breakfast, of Merle tending his garden, of Lucretia quietly tapping his ear, of Magnus passing away peacefully as he held onto his arm, and he’s still trembling at the ferocity of it all when the blade punches through him in one snake-quick stab, right between the shoulderblades, and he deliriously thinks, _ I’m okay. You’re okay, too. I love you. _

Outside, it begins to snow. 

* * *

Taako opens his eyes to a field that smells like sweet meadowgrass and the sea. He brings his hand up to his chest, wincing at the blood that will surely be there, but he finds only soft linen. He looks down: nothing. Just his hand, sun-freckled, smooth, and untouched by age. He closes his eyes, feels the sun on his face. 

At the sound of footsteps, he looks up. “I—”

His hand falls back to his side. And for the first time in what feels like years, he smiles. 

“Magnus?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3
> 
> thank you for reading this, from the bottom of my heart. if you felt something or found a mistake, let me know with a comment (or ten). the creation of this fic really meant a lot for me and was a journey of nearly a year, on and off, as i struggled with motivation and time and creativity. i'm so grateful for all of you. much love.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! if all goes well, i hope to have the next chapter up in another two weeks. please leave a comment if you enjoyed/felt things/found an error/just would like to!! much love <3
> 
> EDIT 12/02/19: i’m very sorry about not having it up!! between the last update and now i’ve applied to college (still gotta do financial aid shit), gotten a part-time job that devours a lot of my free time and mental space, done a whole show, and continued doing school shit. my personal life is also quite fucky! but this fic isn’t abandoned or dead in the slightest; i’m still chipping away at that final chapter! it’s just..... taking a little longer than i had originally intended. thanks for your patience!!


End file.
